Top tech executives are reportedly courting U.S. President-elect Donald Trump ahead of his inauguration in January, 2025.
Trump himself said that he is now being welcomed by business executives, marking a sharp contrast to the situation eight years ago when he won his first term in the White House. Tech executives and founders are reportedly gathering in West Palm Beach, Florida to meet with the president-elect.
“We have a lot of great executives coming in, the top executives, the top bankers, they’re all calling,” Trump said at a press conference on Dec.16, adding that he recently met with billionaire Sergey Brin, the co-founder of Alphabet’s Google.
Recently, Amazon reportedly donated $1 million to Trump’s inaugural fund. The online retailer is also planning to air the event on its Prime Video service, according to an Amazon spokesperson.
READ: Trump issues warning to BRICS, India and Russia respond (December 3, 2024)
The president-elect was speaking to reporters after revealing that SoftBank Group Corp. was planning to invest $100 billion in the U.S. following his meeting with Chief Executive Officer Masayoshi Son.
Trump has reportedly held a series of meetings with tech leaders at his Florida club Mar-a-Lago in recent weeks including a dinner with Meta Platforms CEO Mark Zuckerberg in November, and meetings with Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai and Apple CEO Tim Cook last week. Trump also said that he plans to meet with Amazon’s Jeff Bezos this week.
“I had dinner with, sort of, almost all of them, and the rest are coming,” Trump said, describing the outreach from the business community as “one of the big differences between the first term [and the second].”
In Trump’s first term, his relationships with the tech leaders were rocky. Zuckerberg’s Facebook banned Trump from the platform following the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection in 2021. At one point, the former president labeled Facebook an “enemy of the people.” Trump went after Amazon and Bezos-owned The Washington Post previously and in 2019, Amazon argued in court it was not picked for a Pentagon contract due to Bezos’s past criticism of Trump.
READ: What a second term for Donald Trump means for H-1B visa seekers (December 10, 2024)
“In the first term everybody was fighting. In this term, everybody wants to be my friend,” Trump said. The administration might look different the second time with these newly made relationships.
According to The Hill, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is planning to make a $1 million personal donation to Trump’s inaugural fund. This news comes in addition to Meta and Amazon announcing their respective $1 million contributions as organizations.
Earlier this month, the Trump-Vance Inaugural Committee outlined benefits for donors for the inaugural weekend which includes a reception with Cabinet picks, a Sunday service and the inaugural ball. Committee members who donate $1 million or raise $2 million will receive six tickets to access exclusive inaugural events between Jan. 18 and Jan. 20, the day of the swearing-in.
There seems to be a real shift in how top executives are choosing to deal with Trump, perhaps Elon Musk’s influence on the president-elect has not gone unnoticed among the industry heavy-hitters. Perhaps, the heads at Google, Amazon, and Apple hope to cozy up to Trump just like Musk has. One can only wait and see to what end.