Silicon Valley continues to curry favor with President-elect Donald Trump, offering compliments, Mar-a-Lago visits, and million-dollar checks.
The New York Times reports that the past few weeks have seen a flurry of activity from Silicon Valley billionaires and their companies, as they flash hefty donations for Donald Trump’s inauguration and heap praise upon the President-elect. Tech giants such as Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta, Amazon, and OpenAI’s Sam Altman have each pledged to support Trump’s inaugural committee with seven-figure contributions, often accompanied by personal visits to Mar-a-Lago to meet with the incoming president.
Among the procession of tech leaders who made the pilgrimage to hobnob with Trump were Google CEO Sundar Pichai, and founder Sergey Brin, who dined with the president-elect last week. Apple CEO Tim Cook shared a meal with Trump last Friday, while Amazon founder Jeff Bezos planned to meet with him as well.
This surge of tech industry engagement marks a stark acknowledgment of the reality of doing business in Trump’s Washington. While it’s common for businesses to seek favor with an incoming administration, the fervor of tech activity stands out. The industry, infamously lefti-wing, is now publicly breaking bread with Trump, with Meta and Amazon, whose founders had previously been criticized by the president-elect, each pledging $1 million to his inaugural fund.
OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman, a prominent Democratic donor during Trump’s first term, announced his personal $1 million donation on Friday, stating, “President Trump will lead our country into the age of AI, and I am eager to support his efforts to ensure America stays ahead.”
The turnabout is particularly striking given the extreme leftist politics of some executives now meeting with or praising Trump. Salesforce CEO and hyperleftist Marc Benioff, who owns Time Magazine, posted on X celebrating “a time of great promise for our nation” after Time named Trump its “Person of the Year.”
Trump’s early tech supporters are also expressing their enthusiasm for the incoming administration. Venture capitalist Marc Andreessen, who endorsed Trump during the campaign, revealed he has spent about half his time since Election Day working on the presidential transition, framing Trump’s win as a cultural moment for a “techno-optimist” ideology.
Andreessen has joined executives like Zynga founder Mark Pincus and former Meta executive David Marcus at Mar-a-Lago to help staff the new administration and work on reducing regulations in industries such as AI and cryptocurrencies.
While some tension between Trump and the tech industry has surfaced, with the president-elect naming tech hawks to senior roles and disagreements arising over advisory councils, many cryptocurrency and AI executives have visited Mar-a-Lago or spoken with Trump and his inner circle. Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse plans to donate $5 million in XRP, the company’s digital currency, to Trump’s inaugural fund.
Read more at the New York Times here.
Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship.
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