Tech companies most threatened by donations to Trump’s inauguration fund

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Amazon the founder Jeff Bezos has a particularly sketchy past with the president-elect Donald Trump. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is in a heated legal battle Elon Muskwho has become one of Trump’s biggest supporters and is ready to play a major role in his second administration.

All of which helps explain this week’s announcements of donations to Trump’s inaugural fund.

“President Trump will lead our country into the age of artificial intelligence, and I stand ready to support his efforts to ensure America stays ahead,” Altman said in a statement Friday. Altman said he plans to make a personal donation of $1 million to the fund, the company confirmed.

Meta The company confirmed to CNBC that it is donating $1 million to the inauguration, just weeks after Zuckerberg had a one-on-one lunch with Trump at the Mar-a-Lago resort. Amazon also plans to donate $1 million, according to a report The Wall Street Journal.

Trump has been a fierce critic of technology companies, and he signaled earlier this month, it won’t shy away from antitrust enforcement. The incoming president has nominated Gail Slater, who advised Trump on technology policy during his first term, to head the Justice Department’s antitrust division.

“Big Tech has run wild for years, stifling competition in our most innovative sector and using its market power to disenfranchise so many Americans, as well as Little Tech, as we all know!” Trump wrote on December 4 Truth Social Announces Slater’s candidacy. “I was proud to fight these abuses during my first term, and the Justice Department’s antitrust team will continue to do so under Gail’s leadership.”

Some of Trump’s most hostile words in the past have been directed at Amazon and Meta.

During his first term in office, Trump repeatedly attacked Bezos and his companies, Amazon and The Washington Post, accusing them of tax evasion or publishing “fake news.” Trump He also pointed his finger many times Because it uses the U.S. Postal Service to deliver packages to customers on Amazon, it has argued that the company’s post office is contributing to its budget woes.

Hostility went both ways. Amazon in 2019 blamed Trump’s “behind-the-scenes attacks” on the company cost it a multibillion-dollar Defense Department contract, later dubbed JEDI. Before the 2016 election, Bezos criticized Trump’s behavior, saying it was “eroding our democracy.” After the then-Republican candidate accused Bezos of using the Post as a “tax shelter,” Bezos, who also owns the space company Blue Origin, suggested sending Trump into space on one of his rockets in a tweet.

Blue Origin competes with Musk’s SpaceX for government contracts.

At The New York Times’ DealBook Summit on December 4, Bezos said he expects a more friendly regulatory environment from the next administration.

“I’m actually very optimistic this time,” Bezos said he said on stage. “He has a lot of energy to deregulate. If I can help him do that, I’ll help him.”

Trump called Bezos “Jeff Bozo”. His preferred nickname for a meta CEO is “Zuckerschmuck.”

After Trump lost the 2020 election, he sued Facebook, Twitter and Googleas well as their respective CEOs in class actions. All three companies removed Trump’s accounts from the platforms after the January 6, 2021 riots at the Capitol.

Trump has long accused Facebook of silencing conservative voices. In March he he called platform, “along with much of the media, the enemy of the people,” in an interview with CNBC’s “Squawk Box.”

Now Trump is back in the White House and getting comfortable with it musk, the rest of the tech sector seems eager to curry favor. apple CEO Tim Cook, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, Google CEO Sundar Pichai and all others congratulated the public Trump after his victory in November.

Microsoft declined to comment on whether it contributed to the inauguration. Representatives for Apple and Google did not immediately respond to CNBC’s requests for comment.

The concerns for OpenAI and Altman are slightly different. Altman and Musk originally co-founded the nonprofit OpenAI. The two have since publicly parted ways, with Altman remaining CEO of OpenAI and founding a rival AI company called Musk. xAI.

Musk in March sued OpenAI — and co-founders Altman and Greg Brockman — allege breach of contract and fiduciary duty. He argued that the project was being turned into a for-profit entity controlled by its major shareholder, Microsoft, and sued to block the structural change.

OpenAI clapped back claims on Friday blog post In a post titled “Elon Musk wanted OpenAI for profit,” in 2017 Musk “not only wanted, but actually created, for profit” the company’s proposed new structure to serve as it.

Altman’s future concern is Musk spending more 250 million dollars To help boost Trump’s campaign and is now set to help lead the “Department of Government Efficiency.” In this role, Musk can influence how artificial intelligence is regulated in a way that benefits his business.

Trump on December 5 announced it will be venture capitalist and podcaster David Sacks, a friend of Musk connect Trump administration as “White House AI and Crypto Czar.”

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