Sanjay Mehrotra, an India-born semiconductor executive, accompanied US President Donald Trump on a high-profile visit to China this week. He was the only Indian-origin business leader among a select group of top American corporate executives who joined meetings with Chinese President Xi Jinping.
The two-day summit in Beijing took place amid rising tensions between Washington and Beijing over semiconductors, artificial intelligence, trade restrictions and technology supply chains. Semiconductor companies and their leaders are increasingly central to that strategic rivalry.
Born in Kanpur in 1958, Mehrotra is the chief executive of Micron Technology, one of the world’s leading memory-chip manufacturers. He became Micron’s CEO in 2017 after a long career in the memory and semiconductor industries. Earlier, he co-founded flash-memory leader SanDisk and led the company until its acquisition by Western Digital in 2016.
Mehrotra holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in electrical engineering and computer science from the University of California, Berkeley, and completed an executive program at Stanford Graduate School of Business. Over more than four decades he has worked at major technology firms including Intel, Integrated Device Technology and SEEQ Technology.
Micron has been drawn into the broader US-China chip competition. The company has benefited from US policy support under the CHIPS and Science Act, legislation intended to strengthen domestic semiconductor manufacturing and reduce reliance on foreign supply. Mehrotra personally lobbied lawmakers in Washington in support of the CHIPS Act in 2022, and Micron has since announced significant manufacturing investments in Boise, Idaho, and near Syracuse, New York.
At the same time, the company’s position has been affected by political shifts. President Trump has been critical of parts of the CHIPS Act yet later approved additional federal support that aided Micron’s expansion plans, illustrating the uncertain policy environment facing chipmakers.
In recent years Mehrotra has become a more visible figure in Washington’s technology and policy circles. He attended a Diwali event hosted by Trump, participated in high-level White House meetings with other tech executives, appeared alongside President Joe Biden at the 2023 state dinner for Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and joined the 2024 announcement of federal support for Micron’s New York semiconductor project.
Mehrotra’s inclusion in the delegation highlights the strategic role of semiconductor leaders in shaping global economic and technological relations.
CEOs accompanying President Trump to China included:
Tim Cook (Apple)
Larry Fink (BlackRock)
Stephen Schwarzman (Blackstone)
Kelly Ortberg (Boeing)
Brian Sikes (Cargill)
Jane Fraser (Citi)
Chuck Robbins (Cisco)
Jim Anderson (Coherent)
H. Lawrence Culp (GE Aerospace)
David Solomon (Goldman Sachs)
Jacob Thaysen (Illumina)
Michael Miebach (Mastercard)
Dina Powell McCormick (Meta)
Sanjay Mehrotra (Micron)
Jensen Huang (Nvidia)
Cristiano Amon (Qualcomm)
Elon Musk (Tesla/SpaceX)
Ryan McInerney (Visa)
With inputs from Reuters.
