President-elect Trump’s inauguration will bring together some of the country’s most prominent technology leaders this week, underscoring the results of a monthslong push by the industry to reconcile with the incoming president.
Between inaugural donations, trips to Mar-a-Lago and policy changes, the tech titans have made headway with Trump, who spent years hammering the companies in the traditionally deep blue Silicon Valley.
The industry’s emerging relationship with the president-elect will be on full display Monday, with leaders like Tesla CEO Elon Musk, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Google CEO Sundar Pichai and others expected to be seated together nearby.
“You have this incoming president, elevating these people, seating them on the dais and… effectively trying to make them captives of his policymaking,” said Daniel Alpert, managing partner at the investment firm Westwood Capital.
“The market is receiving it as Trump showing support for these companies, but really what he’s doing is it’s more like organized crime,” Alpert added. “It’s an offer you can’t refuse. He’s co-opting them in full and he’s basically saying, ‘I own you and you owe me.’”
The tech leaders were originally supposed to sit on the dais — a position of honor where Trump’s family members, former presidents and other high-profile guests would sit.
The seating arrangement is now unclear after the ceremony was moved indoors to the Capitol rotunda due to expected cold weather.
Other tech leaders, including Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, OpenAI co-founder and CEO Sam Altman and TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew, will also be in attendance, The Hill has confirmed. Apple CEO Tim Cook is reportedly also expected to appear.
The chorus of tech leaders standing nearby Trump on Monday would have been an unlikely scene during his first administration. In 2016, many of the same people voiced concerns about Trump’s ascendance in the political world.
But Trump’s third bid for president gained steam last year, Silicon Valley seemed keen to put the past behind them.
In the months and weeks leading up to Election Day, tech leaders reached out to Trump.
Cook called to discuss Apple’s concerns about Europe, while Pichai touted the web traffic on Trump’s campaign photo-op at a McDonald’s.
Zuckerberg called Trump after an assassination attempt in July, which the Meta CEO later described as “badass.”
The leaders were quick to congratulate Trump on his reelection and companies like Meta, Google and Amazon donated $1 million to Trump’s inaugural fund.
And unexpected figures like Altman, a longtime Democratic donor, dished out $1 million in personal funds, stating last month he believes Trump will “lead our country into the age of [artificial intelligence.]”
Some observers in Washington were quick to characterize these moves as attempts to make amends with Trump before he heads back to the Oval Office.
“When we look at the tech space, a lot of these founders want to maybe be on the good side of the president of the United States,” said Republican strategist Brittany Martinez. “I think that’s probably helpful in general, you don’t want to be an enemy of the most powerful individual of the world.”
While these executives may be interested in reconciling with Trump, Alpert suggested Trump may not be in it for the same reasons.
“The man is massively transactional,” he said, adding later, “He’s simply going to use each of these guys to the extent that he finds them valuable.”
“And when he no longer finds them valuable or doesn’t find them to be producing anything for him, particularly if there’s a groundswell of opposition to them in Congress, and he needs to buy votes, he’ll sell them off,” Alpert continued.
Other observers, however, believe this is to be expected when an industry prepares for any new commander-in-chief.
“There’s been a little bit of deference to the incoming administration, but that’s historically been fairly normal. I don’t think having top business leaders tip their cap to the will of the electorate and attend an inauguration represents any kind of an emerging oligarchy,” said Matt Calkins, co-founder and CEO of Appian, a cloud computing and enterprise software firm.
Still, Democrats are fiercely pushing back on the emerging dynamics.
In his farewell speech last week, President Biden voiced concerns of an “oligarchy” “of extreme wealth, power and influence” forming in America. He did not directly name Trump or his billionaire allies but went on to call out technology companies like Meta for ending its fact-checking program amid the threat of misinformation and disinformation.
Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) quipped the “billionaires are in charge.”
“People who want to addict our kids to their technology, control what we think and do, destroy small businesses so they own everything,” he wrote on X last week. “That’s what you will see on Monday.”
The inauguration follows a dramatic few weeks in the technology space, marked by major changes in content moderation at Meta and TikTok’s parent company facing its long-awaited deadline to either divest from the platform or be banned in the U.S.
Trump has drastically changed his views on TikTok over the past year. Despite trying to ban the app in his first term, he has recently committed to finding a way to keep the app active in the U.S. as he heads back for a second term.
The app’s fate largely rests in Trump’s hands now. While the Supreme Court upheld the divest-or-ban law Friday, the Biden administration has said it will leave enforcement to the incoming president.
Chew appears to have made inroads with Trump himself, gaining a spot at the inauguration with the U.S.-based tech leaders. He will also attend Trump’s “victory rally” in D.C. on Sunday, The Washington Post reported, and TikTok is reportedly spending $50,000 for an inauguration party for influencers who boosted Trump’s campaign message.
Chew thanked the president-elect for his pledges to keep the app available in the U.S., calling the commitment a “strong stand for the First Amendment and against arbitrary censorship.”
In the weeks leading up to Trump’s inauguration, Zuckerberg announced an overhaul of Meta’s content moderation policies, including the elimination of its third-party fact checking program in favor of a community-based program called Community Notes.
The company also rolled back some LGBTQ protections on its platforms and cut its diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) team and related programs.
Zuckerberg pointed to the recent election in announcing the policy changes, saying it felt “like a cultural tipping point towards, once again, prioritizing speech.” The move was widely viewed as part of an effort to align the company more with the incoming Trump administration.
While the leaders may never admit exactly what made them flock to Trump, some observers suggest Musk likely played a key role as he became more intertwined with the president-elect.
“They’re scared out of their wits. They don’t want to have an oligarchy led by just companies with X in their name, they want to be able to be sharing the pie equally or at least get their share,” Alpert said.
The inauguration sets the stage for Musk to see many of his biggest competitors in the tech and industry space, including some he has publicly clashed with over the years.
Musk and Bezos sparred over social media as recently as last November, when the Tesla CEO accused the Amazon founder of telling people Trump would “lose for sure” and advising them to sell their stock in Musk’s companies.
Bezos’ Blue Origin has struggled to keep up with Musk’s SpaceX, though the two appeared supportive of each other’s business ventures last week in a shift in tone.
Musk has since fired off several posts on X comparing himself and Musk to the main characters of “Stepbrothers,” suggesting a thaw in relations.
Meanwhile, Musk had also repeatedly challenged Zuckerberg to fights and is currently suing Altman and OpenAI, alleging the AI company that Musk helped found in 2015 has abandoned its original mission.
