Tesla CEO Elon Musk, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg are set to sit with President-elect Donald Trump’s Cabinet nominees on Inauguration Day.
An official involved in planning the event told NBC News that the trio would be seated on the platform, right by lawmakers and Trump’s nominees. The seats of honor reflect the friendly position the three richest men in the world have taken toward the second Trump administration. They could also reflect their coming influence.
Musk is far and above the most outspoken Trump ally of the three, spending over $250 million to get him elected after endorsing him in the aftermath of the July 13, 2024, assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania.
Bezos, the owner of the Washington Post, stopped the newspaper from endorsing Democratic nominee Kamala Harris ahead of the 2024 presidential election, arguing that it was necessary to maintain neutrality. The move was widely interpreted as favorable to Trump.
Zuckerberg has turned his political messaging around in recent months. Facebook played a major role in the 2020 election and came under fire from Trump and Republicans for allegedly suppressing conservative voices. Zuckerberg was also tied to an effort to funnel cash to programs designed to boost voter engagement that went almost exclusively to Democratic-leaning outfits. Critics derisively called the program “Zuckerbucks.”
This trend began to reverse when he praised Trump’s actions after the assassination attempt against him as “one of the most bada** things I’ve ever seen in my life.” He met with Trump at Mar-a-Lago in November 2024 and loosened Meta’s content moderation policies this month ahead of Trump’s inauguration, another move viewed as favorable to Trump.
Bezos and Zuckerberg both donated $1 million to Trump’s inaugural fund.
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Big Tech has been one of Trump’s biggest long-term rivals, a frequent target of his fury in public speeches. During the 2024 election cycle, however, Musk, Bezos, and Zuckerberg were among several major Big Tech figures who started to warm to him, with the trend intensifying after his victory.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Apple CEO Tim Cook, software engineer Marc Andreessen, and Google CEO Sunder Pichai have all made overtures toward Trump as well.
