White House Postpones Meeting of Tech Advisers Including Huang and Zuckerberg

Reuters' headline said the meeting had been scrapped, but its report and other accounts say it was postponed rather than cancelled. The Energy Department's website for the meeting now gives November 13 as the date. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment, and no reason for the delay was given.

The panel brings together some of the most influential figures in American AI. Besides Huang and Zuckerberg, its members include AMD chief executive Lisa Su, Oracle's Larry Ellison and Andreessen Horowitz co-founder Marc Andreessen. It is co-chaired by venture capitalist David Sacks and White House technology adviser Michael Kratsios. According to Reuters, it was set up to advise the administration's new AI task force, which the White House calls the "Super Intelligence Task Force" and which includes cabinet officials, Trump appointees and White House staff.

The postponement came a day after a steep sell-off in technology shares. On Thursday investors dumped chip and AI stocks on concern that a Democratic-controlled Congress, after this week's midterm elections, would slow AI development, and that the industry's heavy spending on data centres and other infrastructure may not earn enough to justify it. Reuters said the turmoil has drawn closer scrutiny of the sector from Silicon Valley executives and from policymakers in Washington.

The council has no formal power. But its members run the companies that make most of the chips and models at the centre of the administration's AI agenda, and its advice feeds directly into the task force shaping that policy. Whether the panel meets on November 13 as now scheduled, and what it takes up, will be one of the first signs of how the White House adjusts its AI plans for a Congress it will no longer control.