Physical Address
304 North Cardinal St.
Dorchester Center, MA 02124
U.S. President-elect Donald Trump smiles at the crowd during the 146th Annual General Conference and Exposition of the U.S. National Guard Association at the Huntington Place Convention Center on August 26, 2024 in Detroit, Michigan.
Emily Elconin | Getty Images News | Getty Images
Goal CEO Mark Zuckerberg i Amazon founder Jeff Bezos they have a particularly checkered past with the president-elect donald trump. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is in a heated legal battle Elon Muskwho became one of Trump’s biggest backers and is poised to play an outsized role in his second administration.
All of which helps explain this week’s announcements about donations to Trump’s inauguration fund.
“President Trump will lead our country into the age of AI, and I look forward to supporting 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.
Goal donated $1 million to the inauguration, the company confirmed to CNBC, weeks after Zuckerberg dined with Trump privately at his Mar-a-Lago resort. Amazon He also plans to donate $1 million, according to a report from The Wall Street Journal.
Trump has been a vocal critic of tech companies, and he signaled at the beginning of this month that he will not avoid the application of the antimonopoly law. The incoming president appointed Gail Slater, who advised Trump on technology policy during his first term, to lead the Justice Department’s antitrust arm.
“Big Tech has bailed out for years, stifling competition in our most innovative sector and, as we all know, using its market power to suppress the rights of so many Americans, as well as those of Little Tech!” Trump wrote in a Dec. 4 post about Social Truth announcing Slater’s nomination. “I was proud to fight these abuses during my first term, and our Justice Department’s antitrust team will continue that work under Gail’s leadership.”
Some of Trump’s most hostile words in the past have been directed at Amazon and Meta.
In his first term, Trump repeatedly attacked Bezos and his companies, Amazon and The Washington Post, accusing them of dodging taxes or publishing “fake news,” among other things. trump he also repeatedly pointed his finger at Amazon over its use of the US Postal Service to deliver packages to customers, claiming the company contributed to the post office’s budget woes.
The animosity went both ways. In 2019, Amazon guilty Trump’s “behind-the-scenes attacks” on the company over its loss of a multibillion-dollar Defense Department contract, then called JEDI. And before the 2016 election, Bezos criticized Trump’s behavior, saying it “erodes 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, offered in a tweet to send Trump into space with one of his rockets
Blue Origin competes for government contracts with Musk’s SpaceX.
At the New York Times DealBook Summit on December 4, Bezos said he expects a friendlier regulatory environment in the next administration.
“I’m actually very optimistic this time,” Bezos he said on stage. “He seems to have a lot of energy to reduce regulation. If I can help do that, I’ll help him.”
Trump has called Bezos “Jeff Bozo.” His favorite nickname for Meta’s CEO is “Zuckerschmuck”.
After Trump lost the 2020 election, he sued Facebook, Twitter i Googleas well as their respective CEOs in collective lawsuits. All three companies pulled 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 called out platform “the enemy of the people along with many media outlets,” in an interview on CNBC’s “Squawk Box.”
Now that Trump is back in the White House and has been cozy moss, the rest of the tech sector seems poised to win favor. Apple CEO Tim Cook, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, Google CEO Sundar Pichai and all others publicly congratulated Trump after his victory in November.
Microsoft declined to comment on whether it is contributing to the unveiling. Representatives for Apple and Google did not immediately respond to CNBC’s requests for comment.
For OpenAI and Altman, the concerns are slightly different. Altman and Musk co-founded OpenAI, which was initially a non-profit organization. The two have since publicly parted ways, with Altman continuing as CEO of OpenAI and Musk starting a rival artificial intelligence company called xAI.
In March, Musk sued OpenAI — and co-founders Altman and Greg Brockman — allege breach of contract and fiduciary duty. He claimed that the project had been transformed into a for-profit entity that is largely controlled by major shareholder Microsoft and that he is suing to thwart the change in structure.
OpenAI he applauded Friday, claiming a blog entry titled “Elon Musk wanted a for-profit OpenAI,” that in 2017 Musk “not only wanted, but actually created, a for-profit” to serve as the company’s proposed new structure.
Altman’s next concern is that Musk overspent 250 million dollars to help boost Trump’s campaign, and now he’s set to help lead the “Department of Government Efficiency.” In that role, Musk could influence how AI is regulated in a way that favors his businesses.
On December 5, Trump announced that venture capitalist and podcaster David Sacks, a friend of Musk, will join in the Trump administration as the “White House AI and Crypto Czar.”
WATCH: Trump’s cabinet will have more billionaires than any other in history
