Speaker Mike Johnson plans to meet with executives for major artificial intelligence companies as early as the end of this week or early next week, with pressure growing on Congress to set guardrails around the expanding technology.

“It will be soon,” Johnson told reporters Monday of his schedule. “I think either end of this week or early next week. But wait and see.”

The potential meetings come after three CEOs of nation’s leading AI labs — Dario Amodei of Anthropic, Sam Altman of OpenAI and Elon Musk of xAI — all warned over the weekend that there must be mechanisms put in place to slow down the rapid pace of AI advancements or risk catastrophe as severe as eventual human extinction.

Johnson said he has spoken to Amodei and Altman in the past about AI legislation but not in the past couple of days.

Several lawmakers on Capitol Hill have introduced bills to address the current lack of federal regulations on the industry but there’s little consensus on if or how to proceed. Johnson, who has previously said the first order of business would be for President Donald Trump and tech executives to “go in a big room, close the door and sort this out,” was still noncommittal Monday on whether the House would vote on AI safety legislation before the midterms.

“This is a very complex issue that requires a lot of work and bipartisan solutions,” Johnson said, adding that each AI platform provider has different ideas for what guardrails should look like.

“We want to emphasize the necessity of them providing safe products and self-regulating,” Johnson said. “There is also a role potentially for Congress to play, but we have to do this with a balanced approach to ensure that we maintain our edge over China.”

Johnson separately noted he would support legislation on the floor Tuesday aimed at forcing tech companies to bear the brunt of rising energy costs associated with data centers — an issue that has taken on urgency amid voter backlash ahead of the November elections.

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