OpenAI CEO Sam Altman will attend state dinner for Trump-Xi summit in Washington

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is set to attend President Donald Trump's state dinner for Chinese President Xi Jinping's visit to Washington next week, CNBC has learned.

Altman's expected appearance comes as a heated battle over artificial intelligence regulation unfolds in Washington and Silicon Valley after researchers warned of the risks to humanity and Anthropic's Dario Amodei called for a slowdown in frontier model development.

The hot- button debate has paired unlikely AI lab rivals Altman and Amodei, along with Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, against Trump and big tech leaders such as Nvidia's Jensen Huang and Meta Platforms CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

AI will likely be a major topic of discussion when Trump and the Chinese president convene, especially as Chinese open-weight models advance in capabilities and close the gap with U.S. frontier labs.

Nvidia's Huang is also attending the state dinner, CNBC reported earlier this week.

"President Trump has invited several great American business leaders to his dinner with President Xi because he will always prioritize making good deals for our country," a White House official said in a statement Wednesday.

— CNBC's Ashley Capoot contributed to this article