U.S. President Donald Trump summoned executives from major AI companies to the White House for a meeting, but Apple did not attend, drawing attention.

CNBC reported on Sept. 30 that the “Super Intelligence Luncheon” held the previous day was attended by top tech executives including Nvidia Chief Executive Jensen Huang (젠슨 황), Tesla CEO Elon Musk, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella. OpenAI President Greg Brockman and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos were also there. By contrast, Apple CEO John Ternus and board chairman Tim Cook did not attend.

After the meeting, Trump and Google, Meta, OpenAI, Anthropic, Nvidia and SpaceXAI signed a voluntary pact covering internal controls, external audits and board oversight in the AI development process. Trump described it as a “morally binding” agreement, but it has no legal force or penalty provisions.

Apple and the White House did not disclose the reason for the absence. Brad Gerstner, CEO of Altimeter Capital, told CNBC it was not a big deal and said Apple was likely being fully briefed on the discussions. Cook attended a White House state dinner for Chinese President Xi Jinping just a few days earlier.

Apple’s AI strategy is also cited as a backdrop, as it differs from other Big Tech companies. While Google, Meta, Anthropic and OpenAI are focusing on competition over general-purpose frontier models and large-scale AI infrastructure, Apple is placing emphasis on deeply integrating AI into consumer devices such as the iPhone and Mac. Apple’s latest foundation model was also developed in cooperation with Google’s Gemini technology and runs on devices themselves and on private cloud computing.

Therefore, it is difficult to conclude that Apple is falling behind in the AI race based on its absence alone. Still, the fact that Apple did not show up at a forum where the U.S. government and frontier AI companies discussed safety standards and policy direction is seen as a moment that shows the company is choosing an AI strategy differentiated from other Big Tech firms.