Zuckerberg, Musk and Huang Called Trump Separately to Kill an Industry-Funded AI Watchdog

Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, and Jensen Huang each called President Trump separately with the same ask: kill the plan for an industry-funded AI watchdog.

The proposal was associated with Google DeepMind's Demis Hassabis and modeled in part on FINRA, the securities industry's self-funded watchdog that still reports to the SEC. People familiar with the talks told the Wall Street Journal the three CEOs wanted a light-touch approach, and worried a private oversight body would concentrate influence among OpenAI, Anthropic, and DeepMind.

That account rests on anonymous sources. No statute, executive order, or signed compact ever appeared.

Trump ultimately did not move forward, those same sources say. An earlier Business Insider snapshot, after Zuckerberg's August call alone, still had the idea under consideration inside the White House. The two pictures do not line up cleanly, and the earlier one never mentioned Musk or Huang.

Publicly, the three men already talk like people who do not want a new regulator. Huang told Salesforce's Dreamforce audience, "We don't need new laws. We don't need new regulations." Zuckerberg has argued that competition and liability already push companies to build safely. Musk is messier: he backed Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei's pacing warning with "Dario is right," while SpaceXAI has not announced a coordinated slowdown.

A FINRA-style lab body already showed up in the AI labs joint standards talks. In California, the Newsom AI kill-switch panel is a separate state-level fight. The White House version, for now, looks stalled after three phone calls, not buried by law.