Tech titans dine with Trump indoors as Rose Garden plan rained out

President Trump dined with tech executives and praised ”the high IQ” individuals for their work Thursday night at the White House.

“It’s an honor to be here with this group of people. They’re leading a revolution in business and in genius and in every other work, I think you can imagine,” Mr. Trump said. “There’s never been anything like it.”

The guest list included Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg, Apple CEO Tim Cook, Microsoft Founder Bill Gates and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, the White House confirmed to The Washington Times.

The president joked that he knew everyone at the dinner either directly or indirectly from reading about the work they have done.

The tech titans gathered in the State Dining Room after first lady Melania Trump’s second meeting of the White House’s Artificial Intelligence Education task force, a meeting that involved some of the same executives.

The dinner was originally planned to be held in the newly renovated Rose Garden, but rain in Washington changed the plans.

The Rose Garden has a new look after the Trump team paved over the grassy lawn and set up tables and chairs with yellow striped umbrellas.

“The Rose Garden Club at the White House is the hottest place to be in Washington, or perhaps the world. The president looks forward to welcoming top business, political, and tech leaders for this dinner and the many dinners to come on the new, beautiful Rose Garden patio,” White House spokesman Davis Ingle said in a statement.

Other guests at the dinner included Google co-founder Sergey Brin and CEO Sundar Pichai, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, OpenAI President Greg Brockman and Oracle CEO Safra Catz.

Blue Origin CEO David Limp, TIBCO Software Chairman Vivek Ranadive, Micron CEO Sanjay Mehrotra, Palantir Chief Technology Officer Shyam Sankar, Scale AI CEO Alexandr Wang and Shift4 Payments CEO Jared Isaacman were also on the guest list.

A few guests spoke at the start of dinner after Mr. Trump, including Mr. Zuckerberg, Mr. Brin, Mr. Gates and Mr. Cook.

One notable name left off the list is Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk.

He was a familiar face around the White House during the first few months of the second Trump administration, but after a contentious departure as head of the Department of Government Efficiency, the world’s richest man has gone back to focusing on his companies.