AMD Chair and CEO Lisa Su will sit down with Chinese President Xi Jinping at President Trump's state dinner this week, joining a roster of tech billionaires whose companies profit off Chinese markets while Washington restricts Beijing's access to the very chips they build.
The dinner puts the revolving door between Silicon Valley and the Chinese Communist Party on full display. Su, who leads one of America's premier semiconductor firms, told Fox Business' Liz Claman she was "honored" to attend. "This summit between the presidents, President Xi and President Trump, is very impactful, very important," Su said. "I think technology is one of those areas where we rely on the global ecosystem to come together."
That "global ecosystem" line is doing a lot of work. What it means in plain English: AMD wants to keep selling into China, and Su is betting that face time with Xi helps. The U.S. has slapped export controls on advanced semiconductors — including Nvidia's chips — to choke off China's AI development. AMD has its own stake in how those restrictions get enforced or loosened.
Su won't be alone at the table. Tesla CEO Elon Musk, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, and Apple's Tim Cook are also expected to attend, according to Fox Business. That's the heads of five of the most powerful tech companies in America, breaking bread with the leader of the country that steals their intellectual property, restricts their market access, and competes directly against them for AI dominance.
Fox Business framed the gathering as a natural consequence of geopolitical tensions, noting AI will be a "major topic of discussion" at the two-day summit. What went unmentioned: the financial incentive each CEO carries into that room. These firms have spent billions building Chinese supply chains and customer bases. Every export control tightens the vise on their revenue. A friendly word from Xi — or a signal from Trump that controls might ease — moves stock prices.
Su played the optimist. "I am an AI optimist," she said. "The world is going to be very ambitious with AI. The world should be very ambitious with AI." She added that building trust in AI is "absolutely non-negotiable."
Trust is an interesting word choice from someone breaking bread with the head of a regime that runs mass surveillance on its own citizens and has weaponized American tech platforms to censor dissent globally. The same companies sending CEOs to smile at Xi have a track record of throttling speech and deplatforming Americans at home.
Xi hasn't visited Washington in over a decade. His arrival gets a red carpet at Joint Base Andrews and an arrival ceremony — for a man at odds with Trump on AI, intellectual property theft, trade practices, rare-earth minerals, and China's support for Iran, as Fox Business noted.
The question that won't get asked at the dinner: when Silicon Valley says "global ecosystem," whose interests come first — American workers and national security, or the next quarterly earnings call?
