The agreement, signed after a White House meeting on Tuesday, covers OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Meta, Nvidia and Elon Musk’s xAI. Trump described the commitment as “morally binding”, while the document itself leaves compliance to the companies and creates no penalties or government enforcement mechanism.
The White House Accord on Super Intelligence requires participating companies to apply four layers of controls and audits. The first calls for internal safeguards designed to monitor advanced systems during development, including risks involving cybersecurity, biosecurity, chemical threats and unintended actions by AI models.
Companies are also expected to establish an internal team to verify that those safeguards operate as intended. A third layer requires an external auditor or evaluator to independently assess the controls, while the fourth calls for an independent committee of each company’s board to receive and review reports from internal teams and auditors.
The document says each company remains responsible for developing its technology safely and that the signatories will meet regularly to establish standards and best practices. It also acknowledges that the measures could eventually be incorporated into laws or regulations, but makes clear that the companies are undertaking them voluntarily.
Trump said after the meeting that the arrangement would involve “tremendous self-policing” by the industry. He compared the accord to a constitution and said the companies understood the stakes if their systems caused harm. He also said the administration was considering a committee of 10 people to oversee the effort.
The accord represents a test of whether voluntary corporate governance can address mounting concerns about increasingly capable AI systems without a federal regulatory regime. Trump has repeatedly argued against broad AI-specific regulation, saying excessive rules could constrain US innovation and weaken the country’s competitive position against China.
The agreement nevertheless introduces an external-review requirement into the administration’s approach. Outside evaluators would be asked to determine whether companies’ monitoring and control systems are functioning as intended, although the accord does not require audit findings to be published, specify who must conduct the reviews or establish penalties for deficiencies.
Those limitations have become central to the debate surrounding the initiative. Safety researchers and advocates have argued that voluntary commitments can lack accountability when companies retain discretion over implementation. Supporters of industry-led standards contend that rapidly changing technology can make rigid rules obsolete and that specialist companies are best placed to identify emerging technical risks.
Executives attending the White House gathering included OpenAI president Greg Brockman, Anthropic chief executive Dario Amodei, Google chief executive Sundar Pichai, Meta chief executive Mark Zuckerberg, Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang and Musk. Microsoft chief executive Satya Nadella and other technology leaders also attended the broader meeting.
Amodei, whose company has repeatedly called for stronger safeguards around advanced systems, stressed the potential risks posed by increasingly powerful technology during the event. The accord brings companies that have taken differing public positions on regulation into a common framework, while stopping short of the mandatory standards some industry figures and lawmakers have advocated.
The agreement comes amid heightened scrutiny of autonomous AI agents and their capacity to take actions across computer systems with limited human intervention. Developers have been testing models for their ability to discover software vulnerabilities, perform complex cyber operations and assist with scientific tasks that could carry biological or chemical risks.
Public concern has also increased as AI deployment expands. A Reuters/Ipsos poll released around the White House meeting found 73 per cent of respondents believed AI companies had not done enough to ensure the technology was safe, underscoring pressure on both Washington and the industry to demonstrate stronger safeguards.
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