The Trump administration on Wednesday laid out a plan that aims to make it easier for companies to quickly develop and deploy artificial intelligence technology.
The initiative shows how Silicon Valley tech executives who backed Trump during the election are shaping federal policy that will affect their businesses as they compete globally to dominate the AI race.
“Artificial intelligence is a revolutionary technology with the potential to transform the global economy and alter the balance of power in the world,” said David Sacks, the White House’s AI and crypto advisor, in a statement. “To remain the leading economic and military power, the United States must win the AI race.”
Sacks is a co-founder and partner at Craft Ventures, a venture capital firm in San Francisco.
Tech companies have forged stronger ties with the Trump administration by donating money, showing up at high-profile events such as his inauguration and showcasing their U.S. investments.
Shortly after Trump took office, OpenAI, Oracle and Softbank announced that they planned to invest a total of $500 billion in AI infrastructure over the next four years. Billionaire Elon Musk, who runs Tesla and SpaceX, donated more than $280 million to the 2024 election and was tasked with slashing government spending. Apple, which has faced criticism from Trump for building its iPhones overseas, said it would invest $500 billion in the United States. Nvidia, a chipmaker in Santa Clara, Calif., also said it would spend up to $500 billion over the next four years on AI infrastructure.
In a speech he delivered before signing executive orders, Trump declared that America will win the AI race, pushed for a single federal standard regulating AI rather than leaving it up to the states. He advocated for the ability of AI companies to train their systems on books and articles without fear they’re violating copyright law or requiring they make deals with content providers.
“America must once again be a country where innovators are rewarded with a green light, not strangled with red tape, so they can’t move,” Trump said.
At the same time, he acknowledged that AI does come with risks and criticized tech companies for building factories and hiring workers in other countries such as China and India while “censoring” content.
“Winning the AI race will demand a new spirit of patriotism and national loyalty in Silicon Valley and long beyond Silicon Valley,” he said.
The AI plan underscores how Trump is taking a different approach to AI regulation than his predecessor, former President Biden, who focused on AI’s benefits but also potential risks such as fueling disinformation and displacing jobs. Trump had revoked Biden’s executive order in January that placed guardrails around AI development.
“It’s a more pro-growth approach to AI, and I personally believe that that’s the right way to go, as contrasted with the more fear-based approach that we saw in the prior administration,” said John Villasenor, a professor and co-director of the UCLA Institute for Technology, Law, and Policy.
Tech companies started investing in artificial intelligence long before the rise in popularity of OpenAI’s ChatGPT, a chatbot that can generate text and images. But the emergence of more rivals has sparked a fierce competition among companies that are trying to release new AI tools that could reshape industries from healthcare to education.
The rapid pace of technological development has raised concerns about whether the government is doing enough to regulate tech companies and safeguard the public from AI’s potential dangers. Some fact-checkers have noted that AI chatbots can spew out incorrect information. Parents are worried chatbots their children use could pose a threat to their mental health.
But regulation has a tough time keeping pace with how fast technology moves. The government also has to balance concerns that too many rules can hinder how quickly companies can release new AI-powered products. As major tech giants from Google and Meta face OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT, they’re also going head to head with rivals in other countries including Chinese AI company DeepSeek.
The plan outlines removing “bureaucratic red tape” and “onerous federal regulation” that would make it tougher for companies to quickly build and develop AI technology. It also mentions revamping permits for data centers, infrastructure needed to power AI systems.
Data centers house computing equipment such as servers used to process the trove of information needed to train and maintain AI systems. But the amount of water and electricity data centers consume concerns some environmentalists.
Ahead of the plan’s release, more than 80 civil rights, labor and environmental groups signed a “people’s AI action plan.”
“We can’t let Big Tech and Big Oil lobbyists write the rules for AI and our economy at the expense of our freedom and equality, workers and families’ well-being, even the air we breathe and the water we drink — all of which are affected by the unrestrained and unaccountable roll-out of AI,” the competing plan said.
The White House’s plan also tries to address one of the biggest concerns about the rapid deployment of AI: the potential that technology could replace humans in some jobs. The building of infrastructure to power AI systems, for example, will create high-paying jobs for Americans, the plan said.
“AI will improve the lives of Americans by complementing their work — not replacing it,” the plan said.
It also said that AI systems must be free from bias. The plan recommends that the National Institute of Standards and Technology eliminate references to “misinformation, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, and climate change” in its AI risk management framework.
The plan also signaled that the federal government would withhold federal funding from “states with burdensome AI regulations,” a proposal that some child safety groups criticized. California lawmakers have been working on legislation that aims to make AI chatbots safer but it’s unclear from the plan how burdensome would be defined.
“How much teeth that might have will depend on to what extent that’s translated into sort of concrete policy about how you evaluate what burdensome is,” Villasenor said.
The plan emphasized the importance of national security. It mentioned that the U.S. should export its “full AI technology stack” that includes hardware and software to its allies and partners but deny advanced AI to its foreign adversaries.
Some tech executives on Wednesday quickly praised the AI plan.
Box Chief Executive Aaron Levie said that the plan is “quite strong.”
“It has a clear mission to win the AI race and accelerate the development and use of AI by removing roadblocks or aiding adoption. Importantly, it focuses on the positive benefits of AI, which we’re all seeing every day,” he wrote on X.
Fred Humphries, Microsoft’s corporate vice president of U.S. Government Affairs, also praised the plan.
“President Trump’s plan will accelerate infrastructure readiness so AI can be built and used here, and help students and workers with skills needed to win in an AI-powered global economy,” he said on X.
