A White House staffer who shuns the spotlight is driving profound changes in the U.S

A closed-door gathering at the White House brought together leaders of companies worth a combined ~$18 trillion — Nvidia's Jensen Huang, Tesla/xAI's Elon Musk, Microsoft's Satya Nadella, Dell's Michael Dell, AMD's Lisa Su, and Google's Sergey Brin — ahead of receiving the US National Science and Technology Medals, with 39-year-old OSTP director Michael Kratsios, a former Peter Thiel chief of staff, serving as the key organizer. Behind the ceremony, the executives' private discussion centered on the AI compute shortage, with Musk and Brin both revealing that OpenAI president Greg Brockman had approached them seeking compute capacity. Musk flagged memory chip supply constraints as an even bigger bottleneck, citing Micron's 87% gross margin last quarter — more than doubled in two years — and $85 billion in net profit over the past 12 months, while Nadella questioned whether Micron would reinvest those profits into capex. The article profiles Kratsios as the quiet architect of US tech policy across two Trump terms, detailing negotiations over a "superintelligence" White House accord, advanced nuclear permitting reform, and efforts to overhaul the post-Manhattan Project research establishment. The piece matters because it offers a rare window into the power dynamics among AI's dominant players and the policy machinery shaping US tech strategy. What to watch: how the White House balances compute allocation, semiconductor supply, and nuclear energy approvals among these competing tech giants.