RESOLVING THE LEDGER
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See the full story · 1 sourcesWhen President Donald Trump signed his AI executive order in early June, he gave federal agencies 60 days to develop a key framework as part of its implementation.
The fast-approaching deadline of Aug. 1 has been the subject of much anticipation in Silicon Valley, where the debate over artificial intelligence regulation has been raging in recent days. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Nvidia 's Jensen Huang were among tech leaders who met with lawmakers and Trump administration officials in Washington, D.C., this week, all trying to influence upcoming decisions.
Trump's executive order , thin on details, asks AI companies to voluntarily submit their models to the government for evaluation ahead of their public release. The president tasked Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent , Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth , White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles , Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and other officials with ironing out the specifics.
When asked for comment about the status of the framework, the White House directed CNBC to a social media post from spokesperson Kush Desai: " BREAKING: Trump White House to meet a deadline we set for ourselves."
Representatives from OpenAI and Anthropic didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.
Altman told CNBC on Wednesday that he's seen a draft of the framework, and that he didn't have "anything specifically in mind" as far as proposed changes. He met with Wiles during his visit, and was also expected to meet with Bessent and Lutnick, according to reports .
The deadline lands during a tense moment for AI development in the U.S., as the tech industry's most powerful leaders weigh in on how AI should be regulated, and whether OpenAI and Anthropic, the leading model developers, should be able to exert outsized influence over the future.
In recent weeks, the market has experienced a dramatic shake-up as so-called open-weight models , largely out of China, are showing how quickly they can advance in their capabilities. The models offer cost-efficient alternatives to the frontier models from OpenAI and Anthropic, and allow users to download the technology, modify it and run it on the infrastructure of their choice.
Those developments have prompted a fierce debate within the tech sector over whether the Trump administration should move to restrict or outright ban Chinese open-weight models. In almost unprecedented fashion, the world's leading tech execs have unified in opposing any potential ban.
Nvidia's Huang supercharged the discussion on Monday by releasing a letter urging policymakers to avoid "premature restrictions" on open-weight models. Huang used it as an opportunity to make his debut post on X, formerly Twitter.
Elon Musk , who controls X through his rocket company SpaceX , responded by saying, "This has my full support. Jensen is right."
Microsoft , Meta , Palantir and dozens of other companies signed the letter. OpenAI joined later, but Anthropic did not, opting instead to outline its position in a separate blog post .
The Trump administration hasn't officially shared its position on the matter, though former AI czar David Sacks, who still has influence in the administration, has been among the most vocal opponents of any sort of ban.
According to Trump's executive order, the AI framework will involve a classified benchmarking process that will assess models' cyber capabilities and determine if they should be considered a "covered frontier model." It will also encourage companies to work with the government to determine the "trusted partners" that will have access to those models.
A finalized framework could be welcome news for both OpenAI and Anthropic, which have had to navigate a murky model deployment process since Trump first signed the order.
Soon after the executive order, Anthropic had to disable access to its Fable 5 and Mythos 5 models to comply with an export control directive that was issued by the Commerce Department. Two weeks later OpenAI said it agreed to limit the rollout of its GPT-5.6 model series to a group of "trusted partners" at the request of the U.S. government. Both companies were eventually able to roll out their models more broadly.
"The government and private sector have worked together in a way we have never seen before and this foundation of America First is unprecedented," Wiles wrote in a rare post on X in late June. "Our shared priority remains: get the best tech deployed as quickly and safely as possible."
WATCH: OpenAI CEO Sam Altman to meet with White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles this week
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