Masiyiwa Amongst those summoned by King Charles as AI Titans Gather in Scottish Estate,

By Ross Moyo
Masiyiwa is Among Handful of Global Executives at Dumfries House as Monarch Warns of “Catastrophic” Risks.

King Charles III convened Nvidia’s Jensen Huang, Google DeepMind’s Demis Hassabis, OpenAI CFO Sarah Friar and Anthropic global-affairs chief Tino Cuéllar at his Dumfries House estate in Scotland on September 17, using the invite-only gathering to press industry leaders on AI safety even as competition to build ever-more-powerful models intensifies.

Strive Masiyiwa, founder and chairman of pan-African technology group Cassava Technologies, was the sole African executive on the guest list — a marker of the continent’s growing stake in how AI rules get written, even as Washington, Brussels and Beijing dominate the regulatory conversation.

The Pitch

The summit’s subtext: industry self-policing versus state control. King Charles used his opening remarks to push firmly toward the latter, telling attendees that safeguards were needed “before it is too late” and that AI’s darker capabilities — including, he suggested, life-and-death stakes — demanded urgency rather than deference to market forces.

Also in the room: UK AI Minister Kanishka Narayan, giving the British government a direct line into the conversation, and Vatican adviser Paolo Benanti, who has publicly called for slower AI development — a position increasingly at odds with the pace set by US labs.

Why It Matters

No binding commitments emerged, and Buckingham Palace framed the session as one installment in an ongoing dialogue rather than a policy summit. But the guest list alone signals where the center of gravity sits: the companies actually training frontier models, a monarch positioning Britain as a safety-minded convener, and — via Masiyiwa — a bid to keep emerging markets from being an afterthought in decisions that will shape AI’s rollout in health care, agriculture, education and financial services across the Global South.

The gathering lands amid a wider split in tone. Anthropic researchers have flagged extinction-level risks from unchecked development; Pope Leo XIV has echoed concerns about AI eroding human dignity; the Trump administration, by contrast, has largely waved off safety warnings in favor of speed. Dumfries House didn’t resolve that tension — but it put the opposing camps in the same room.

Photo Caption:
The most important AI conversation is not simply about how fast the technology can advance. It is about where that progress takes society. Cassava Technologies’ Founder and Chairman, Strive Masiyiwa, joined global technology, government and civil society leaders at the AI Summit convened by His Majesty King Charles III at Dumfries House in Scotland, exploring how AI can benefit society, strengthen communities and improve lives. [Photo: Jonathan Brady/Pool via Reuters]