Tech billionaires Bezos and Zuckerberg attend Trump inauguration

A parade of tech billionaires and key members of his orbit joined President-elect Donald Trump as he kicked off his inaugural celebrations, together with a church service on Monday morning.

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg, Apple chief Tim Prepare dinner, and Google chief Sundar Pichai have been seen taking prime seats at St John’s Church.

Media tycoon Rupert Murdoch, FIFA president Gianni Infantino and former UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson have been additionally noticed on the church.

Many of those executives have been among the many first enterprise world critics of Trump throughout his first time period, talking out on points reminiscent of local weather change and immigration.

A number of of the tech billionaires joined Trump on the Capitol rotunda, together with SpaceX and Tesla boss Elon Musk, who spent a number of seconds staring up on the ornate ceiling.

Musk spent practically $300m serving to the president marketing campaign and has caught carefully to his aspect ever since.

TikTok chief govt Shou Zi Chou too is anticipated to attend the inauguration, as his firm grapples with the fallout from a US ban, in addition to Sam Altman of OpenAI and Dara Khosrowshahi of Uber.

It’s a hanging spectacle. The final public occasion in Washington to convey so many tech bosses collectively in the identical room was a 2020 congressional listening to aimed toward their firms.

Right this moment, many of the corporations nonetheless have severe excellent issues earlier than the US authorities, together with anti-monopoly lawsuits, investigations, regulatory fights and tariffs.

Final week, Senator Elizabeth Warren and Michael Bennet, each Democrats, shared a letter addressed to the executives, which accused them of making an attempt to “cozy as much as the incoming Trump administration in an effort to keep away from scrutiny, restrict regulation and purchase favor”.

“Humorous they by no means despatched me one in every of these for contributing to Democrats,” Mr Altman posted on social media in reply.

How enduring the tech bromance proves and the way far Trump will push on many of those points stay open questions.

However the president, who left workplace the primary time as a sort of pariah within the enterprise world, seems to be revelling in his new place.

As he wrote on social media final month: “All people desires to be my pal!!!”

Trump’s budding friendships with tech executives haven’t gone over effectively with everybody in his circle.

Former Trump White Home chief strategist Steve Bannon on Sunday known as Musk a “really evil man”, claiming he would have him “run out of right here by Inauguration Day”.

“I have a look at this and I feel most individuals in our motion have a look at this as President Trump broke the oligarchs, he broke them and so they surrendered,” Bannon instructed ABC Information.