US President Donald Trump postponed signing an executive order on artificial intelligence on Thursday, May 21, after last-minute lobbying from Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, and former White House AI adviser, David Sacks. The White House has already sent invitations to a signing ceremony attended by AI company executives before the decision to postpone was made. 

“I didn’t like certain aspects of it. I postponed it,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on Thursday. “I think it gets in the way of , you know, we are leading China, we are leading everybody, and I didn’t want to do anything to get in the way of that lead,” he said, reported Axios.

Reports suggest Mark Zuckerberg and Sacks all spoke with Trump between Wednesday night and Thursday morning. They told Trump the order could slow development of AI technology, warning of a chilling effect on the industry, according to anonymous insiders who spoke to the Washington Post, as reported by Axios. White House officials were reportedly taken aback by the delay, particularly as Sacks had previously indicated he could accept the order.

The draft order would have required AI companies to share first-tier models with the Federal government at least 90 days before public release under a voluntary framework. The executive order would have created some oversight for powerful new AI models but would not have created an official new licensing regime, according to Semaphore. 

Musk and others were able to appeal to the accelerationist faction within the administration, including officials at the National Economic Council and staffers in the vice president’s office, according to Semaphore. Musk’s xAi and Zuckerberg’s Meta are direct competitors to Anthropic and OpenAI, two companies whose frontier model releases were the primary trigger for the draft order. The White House has not said when or whether the order will be signed in revised form.

Also Read: White House Set to Issue AI Order For 90-Day Access to Frontier Models