WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump called for boosting U.S. dominance in artificial intelligence with an executive order that demands a new policy direction for a rapidly evolving technology that’s the focus of intense competition with China.

Under the order signed at the White House on Thursday, Trump called for an interagency group to craft a new policy within six months intended to ensure U.S. dominance in AI. The move came days after Trump scrapped an AI policy established by President Joe Biden that set safety and transparency requirements for AI developers.

“We’re basically announcing the administration’s policy to make America the world capital in artificial intelligence to dominate and to lead the world in AI,” David Sacks, a venture capitalist who is Trump’s incoming czar on AI and crypto policy, said at the signing.

The AI order was one of several signed by Trump on Thursday, including a measure creating a working group, also led by Sacks, to bolster the cryptocurrency industry in the U.S. through legislative proposals and exploring the creation of a digital asset stockpile, among other efforts.

Trump has signaled a wide-ranging approach to ensure U.S. leadership in AI, with pledges to spur private-sector investment by accelerating the permit process and easing other regulations. Those efforts will be steered by technology industry leaders who’ve joined his administration, including Sacks and Elon Musk, who has emerged as one of the president’s closest advisers.

The order also called for preventing AI systems from being built with “ideological bias and engineered social agendas.” Some AI tools have drawn criticism for appearing to present certain political leanings — Google’s AI image generator, for instance, drew criticism from people including Musk last year for demonstrating what they described as anti-White bias.

Trump has rapidly reset the course for American AI policy at a time when other countries are jockeying to set rules of the road for the disruptive technology. Last year, the European Union passed the AI Act, perhaps the most comprehensive guardrails for AI to date. The rules ban facial recognition and require strict oversight for “high-risk” AI used in sectors like health care and law enforcement.

The president’s desire to leave a mark with AI was on display Tuesday — his first full day in office — with a White House unveiling of a joint venture on data-center infrastructure with SoftBank Group Corp., OpenAI, and Oracle Corp.

SoftBank’s Masayoshi Son, OpenAI’s Sam Altman and Oracle’s Larry Ellison all joined Trump to herald the venture. The partnership, known as Stargate, will deploy $100 billion “immediately” and have a goal of increasing to “at least” $500 billion to build new infrastructure for OpenAI, including data centers and physical campuses, the companies said.

Hours before signing the order on Thursday, Trump highlighted Stargate in remarks to the World Economic Form in Davos, Switzerland, as an example of the kind of investment he intended to foster. He told attendees via video conference that he intended to “make the United States a manufacturing superpower and the world capital of artificial intelligence and crypto.”

Yet in an early sign of discord within the new administration, Stargate was publicly criticized by Musk, who questioned in posts on his X social media platform whether the project’s backers have enough money. Altman called that characterization wrong and suggested Musk was upset because the pact could rival the billionaire’s own xAI initiative.

Asked during Thursday’s signing ceremony whether the Stargate partners had sufficient financing, Trump said: “They’re putting up money. They’re very rich people, so I hope they do. I mean, Elon doesn’t like one of those people.”

(Stephanie Lai contributed to this report.)

©2025 Bloomberg L.P. Visit bloomberg.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.