Why Amazon, Facebook and Ford are spending big

Top CEOs and their companies are pledging millions of dollars to the president-elect donald trumpinaugural committee as they seek to get on his good side and make inroads before he takes office.

Some of the planned donations as reported includes $1 million each Jeff Bezos‘ AmazonSam Altman, CEO of OpenAI and parent company of Facebook Goalled by Mark Zuckerberg. Others include $2 million from Robinhood Markets and $1 million each from both Uber and its general manager, Dara Khosrowshahi.

Ford is as reported matching his own $1 million donation with a fleet of vehicles.

Hedge fund manager Ken Griffin also said he plans to give $1 million to the inaugural committee tax-exempt, Bloomberg reported. There are said to be other donations from financial leaders in the works.

On the strength of a decisive election victory, Trump has pledged to revamp US economic policy in a way that could have huge benefits for some favored industries, such as fossil fuels.

At the same time, he has telegraphed the value, both personal and political, he places on face-to-face meetings and public praise from the CEOs of the world’s biggest companies.

“EVERYONE WANTS TO BE MY FRIEND!!!” Trump wrote in a post on Thursday about Social Truththe social networking application managed by you technology company.

Many of these CEOs have already made, or are planning to make, trips to Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s Palm Beach, Fla., resorts and de facto transition headquarters as they seek to gain influence and access to the incoming administration .

To that end, Trump’s inaugural committee presents a “unique opportunity,” Brendan Glavin, director of research at the money-for-politics nonprofit OpenSecrets, said in an interview.

Inaugural committees, which are appointed by presidents-elect, plan and finance most of the pomp and circumstance that traditionally surrounds the transition of power from one administration to another.

While the money ultimately benefits an up-and-coming political candidate, it doesn’t carry the same connotations as a donation to, say, a super PAC, which can fund partisan political activities that risk controversy.

And, unlike a direct contribution to a candidate’s campaign, there are no limits on how much an individual — or a corporation or labor group — can give to an inaugural committee.

Also, since Trump already won the election, an inaugural contribution carries no risk for a high-profile executive to support a losing candidate.

“It’s really a great opportunity for them to curry favor with the incoming administration,” Glavin said.

While it’s nothing new for corporations and power brokers to throw big bucks at inaugural committees, experts told CNBC that the Trump factor changes the calculus.

“It’s all ramped up now,” Glavin said. “None of these people want to be Trump’s punching bag for four years.”

Trump’s inaugural committee and his transition team did not respond to requests for comment.

Trump’s 2017 inaugural committee raised about $107 million, by far the most of any in U.S. history. The previous record had been established in 2009 during the first inauguration of barack obamawhose commission grossed $53 million.

Trump’s second inauguration is poised to break that record, with pledged contributions already surpassing the fundraising goal of $150 million. ABC News reports.

president Joe BidenThe inaugural committee, by comparison, raised almost 62 million dollars.

“One of the oldest adages in Washington is that if you’re not at the table, you’re on the menu, and the price of admission to have a seat at the table just keeps going up,” said Michael Beckel, director of research at Issue One, a political reform advocacy group.

The increased funding for Trump’s second inaugural committee came in part from tech giants, many of which largely shied away from supporting his first inauguration.

Aside from GoDaddy.com founder Robert Parsons, who gave $1 million, few other Big Tech leaders gave to Trump Committee 2017.

Trump once openly clashed with some of them, including Zuckerberg and Bezoswho also owns The Washington Post, a frequent target of the president-elect’s ire.

Not so this time. As Trump pledges to dismantle reams of federal regulations, but also continues to accuse Big Tech of stifling competition, industry leaders may be more eager for their relationship with the White House than ever.

“I’m actually very optimistic,” Bezos said of a second Trump presidency in a Dec. 4 interview at the New York Times’ DealBook conference. “I’m very hopeful. He seems to have a lot of energy to reduce regulation. And my point of view, if I can help him do that, I’ll help him. Because we have too much regulation in this country.”

The comments came in the wake of a scandal at The Washington Post in October, when the paper reported Bezos decided not publish its editorial board’s endorsement of the vice president Kamala Harris about trump Bezos in one op-ed he defended the paper’s decision to stop endorsing presidential candidates, but the reversal led to an exodus of subscribers and led to numerous staff members resigning in protest.

Nowhere is Trump’s new friendship with the tech world more pronounced than in his blossoming relationship with Tesla and the SpaceX CEO. Elon Muskwho spent more than $250 million helping elect Trump.

Musk, the world’s richest person, has appeared frequently at Trump’s side before and after his election victory and is said to have been involved in all aspects of Trump’s transition planning. He and businessman Vivek Ramaswamy have been tapped to lead an advisory group tasked with cutting government costs.

This could put Altman of OpenAI, which is currently wrapped up in a claim for breach of contract carried by Musk, in an awkward position.

Along with his inaugural $1 million donation, Altman praised Trump earlier this month. “President Trump will lead our country into the age of AI, and I look forward to supporting his efforts to ensure that America remains at the forefront,” he said.

Craig Holman, government affairs lobbyist for the progressive nonprofit Public Citizen, told CNBC that these numbers are “very afraid that Donald Trump might retaliate against them.”

“So they’re throwing money” at his feet “in order to curry favor,” Holman said.

Four days after the presidential election, Trump announced the formation of the “Trump Vance Inaugural Committee, Inc.”, a 501(c)(4) non-profit organization. It is co-chaired by real estate investor Steve Witkoff and former Republican Sen. Kelly Loeffler of Georgia, who is also Trump’s pick to lead the Small Business Administration.

Reince Priebus, who was one of Trump’s chiefs of staff in the White House during his first term, said in a X post who has been selected to serve as the committee’s finance chairman.

Priebus also shared a screenshot of an invitation that listed the names of other finance chairs. They include Miriam Adelson, the GOP mega-donor who spent $100 million this year on a pro-Trump super PAC and billionaire Trump donor Diane Hendricks.

Inaugural committees must publicly disclose the names of donors who give $200 or more, but those disclosures must not be made until 90 days after the inaugural ceremony.

If the commission has a surplus after all the holidays, figuring out how much is left can be a challenge.

Trump’s 2017 inauguration was a smaller affair than Obama’s in 2009, even though Trump raised more than twice as much money for his as Obama’s. As a result, Trump’s committee was expected to have tens of millions of dollars left over after paying for balls and hotels.

But years after the fact, it was it is not clear what happened much of this money.

Federal documents show that about a quarter of all funds raised, $26 million, were paid to a newly created company which was run by an adviser to first lady Melania Trump.

“We look at the history of funding for inaugurations, and it’s clear that it comes from very large donors, wealthy special interests and corporations, almost all of which have pending business with the federal government,” said Public Citizen’s Holman.

He added: “This is a real cloadero of buying favors.”