Silicon Valley tech moguls and companies are donating large sums to President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration fund.
Open AI CEO Sam Altman, Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta, and Jeff Bezos’ Amazon have all donated or plan to donate $1 million each to the fund.
Altman, who plans to make a personal donation to the fund, told NPR, “President Trump will lead our country into the age of AI, and I am eager to support his efforts to ensure America stays ahead.”
Amazon’s donation to the fund comes as Bezos, the company’s executive chairman, plans to visit Trump next week at Mar-a-Lago, the Wall Street Journal reported, which said that Zuckerberg directed Meta to make the fund contribution.
A person close to Bezos said that “Bezos is donating through Amazon” to the fund. In addition, the company will be streaming the inauguration through its Prime Video service.
This comes as the tech moguls have begun to move in Trump’s favor over the past year. Following the first assassination attempt on Trump, Zuckerberg called Trump a “bad*ss” and in late November, it was revealed that he met with Trump at Mar-a-Lago.
Bezos refused to allow the Washington Post, which he owns, to endorse Kamala Harris in the 2024 election and congratulated Trump following his November victory.
Speaking at a New York Times conference in early December, Bezos said he was “very optimistic” about Trump’s second term and expressed support for the Department of Government Efficiency, which is co-headed by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy.
Zuckerberg admitted in an August letter to Congress that the Biden administration “repeatedly pressured our teams for months to censor certain COVID-19 content, including humor and satire, and expressed a lot of frustration with our teams when we didn’t agree.”
The platform also came under fire for suppressing the Hunter Biden laptop story. Bezos, who also owns the company Blue Origin, once offered as an insult to send Trump to space on one of his rockets while Trump slammed Bezos’ companies.
