US, China plan high-stakes AI talks in September amid tech rivalry

The United States and China are planning to hold high-stakes AI talks in September in the midst of intensifying tech rivalry.

According to the sources privy to the matter and reported by Reuters, the talks stems from the Trump-Xi summit held in May 2026 and will primarily focus on addressing the regulatory challenges.

The bilateral discussions between two global superpowers will emphasize on risks posed by increasingly powerful frontier AI models and their solutions.

While final dates remain unconfirmed, the talks are expected to take place ahead of Chinese President Xi Jinping's planned visit to the US on September 24. 

As per sources, from the US side, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent would reportedly lead the talks with Beijing counterparts. However, it is not yet confirmed which participants would be the parts of discussions from both sides.

The agenda and location of the discussion remain under deliberation as preparations are still in the early stages, three sources said.

The report comes as both countries are locked in competition to outpace each other in tech and AI supremacy. Most of the US companies rely on Chinese open-source AI models as the Trump administration cracked down on Anthropic and OpenAI by curbing their models’ access for some time.

However, the launch of Kimi K3 by Chinese AI startup Moonshot ignited the anxiety in Silicon Valley because of open-source capabilities that could rival US tech giants.

On Monday, Axios reported that the Trump administration is considering banning or restricting Chinese advanced AI models.

On Tuesday, the Financial Times reported that Chinese regulators, led by the Ministry of Commerce (MofCom), are considering tightening export controls on artificial intelligence and semiconductor technologies amid the US-China tech rivalry.

MofCom has been consulting with domestic AI and chipmaking companies, including Alibaba, ByteDance, and Zhipu to gather feedback on these potential restrictions. These restrictions include restricting foreign users from downloading open-weight models to local servers and curbing the transfer of key data used for overseas training.

However, no official authorities from US and China have confirmed this report.