NEW YORK — In a string of visits, dinners, calls, monetary pledges and social media overtures, big tech chiefs — including Apple’s Tim Cook, OpenAI’s Sam Altman, Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg and Amazon’s Jeff Bezos — have joined a parade of business and world leaders in trying to improve their standing with President-elect Donald Trump before he takes office in January.
“The first term, everybody was fighting me,” Trump said in remarks at Mar-a-Lago. “In this term, everybody wants to be my friend.”
Tech companies and leaders have now poured millions into his inauguration fund, a sharp increase — in most cases — from past pledges to incoming presidents. But what does the tech industry expect to gain out of their renewed relationships with Trump?
A clue to what the industry is looking for came just days before the election when Microsoft executives — who’ve largely tried to show a neutral or bipartisan stance — joined with a close Trump ally, venture capitalist Marc Andreessen, to publish a blog post outlining their approach to artificial intelligence policy.
“Regulation should be implemented only if its benefits outweigh its costs,” said the document signed by Andreessen, his business partner Ben Horowitz, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and the company’s president, Brad Smith.
They also urged the government to back off on any attempt to strengthen copyright laws that would make it harder for companies to use publicly available data to train their AI systems. And they said, “the government should examine its procurement practices to enable more startups to sell technology to the government.”
Trump has pledged to rescind President Joe Biden’s sweeping AI executive order, which sought to protect people’s rights and safety without stifling innovation. He hasn’t specified what he would do in its place, but his campaign said AI development should be “rooted in Free Speech and Human Flourishing.”
Trump’s choice to head the Interior Department, North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum, has spoken openly about the need to boost electricity production to meet increased demand from data centers and artificial intelligence.
“The AI battle affects everything from defense to healthcare to education to productivity as a country,″ Burgum said on Nov. 15, referring to artificial intelligence. “And the AI that’s coming in the next 18 months is going to be revolutionary. So there’s just a sense of urgency and a sense of understanding in the Trump administration″ to address it.
Demand for data centers ballooned in recent years due to the rapid growth of cloud computing and artificial intelligence, and local governments are competing for lucrative deals with big tech companies.
But as data centers begin to consume more resources, some residents are pushing back against the world’s most powerful corporations over concerns about the economic, social and environmental health of their communities.
“Maybe Big Tech should buy a copy of ‘The Art of The Deal’ to figure out how to best negotiate with this administration,” suggested Paul Swanson, an antitrust attorney for the law firm Holland & Hart. “I won’t be surprised if they find ways to reach some accommodations and we end up seeing more negotiated resolutions and consent decrees.”
Although federal regulators began cracking down on Google and Facebook during Trump’s first term as president — and flourished under Biden — most experts expect his second administration to ease up on antitrust enforcement and be more receptive to business mergers.
Google may benefit from Trump’s return after he made comments on the campaign trail suggesting a breakup of the company isn’t in the U.S. national interest, after a judge declared its search engine an illegal monopoly. But recent nominations put forward by his transition team have favored those who have been critical of Big Tech companies, suggesting Google won’t be entirely off the hook.
Cook’s notoriously rocky relationship with the EU can be traced back to a 2016 ruling from Brussels in a tax case targeting Apple. Cook slammed the bloc’s order for Apple to pay back up to 13 billion euros ($13.7 billion) in Irish back taxes as “total political crap.”
Trump, then in his first term as president, piled on, referring to the European Commissioner Margrethe Vestager, who was spearheading a campaign on special tax deals and a crackdown on Big Tech companies, as the “tax lady” who “really hates the U.S.”
Brussels was eventually vindicated after the bloc’s top court rejected Apple’s appeal this year, though it didn’t stop Cook from calling Trump to complain, Trump recounted in a podcast in October.
Trump hosted Cook for a Friday evening dinner at the president-elect’s Mar-a-Lago resort, according to a person familiar with the matter who was not authorized to comment publicly. Neither Apple nor the Trump transition team has commented on the nature of their discussions.
Altman, Amazon and Meta all pledged to donate $1 million each to Trump’s inaugural fund.
During his first term, Trump criticized Amazon and railed against the political coverage at The Washington Post, which billionaire Bezos owns. Meanwhile, Bezos had criticized some of Trump’s past rhetoric. In 2019, Amazon also argued in a court case that Trump’s bias against the company harmed its chances of winning a $10 billion Pentagon contract.
More recently, Bezos has struck a more conciliatory tone. He recently said at The New York Times’ DealBook Summit in New York that he was “optimistic” about Trump’s second term, while also endorsing president-elect’s plans to cut regulations.
The donation from Meta came just weeks after Zuckerberg met with Trump privately at Mar-a-Lago.
During the 2024 campaign, Zuckerberg did not endorse a candidate for president, but voiced a more positive stance toward Trump. Earlier this year, he praised Trump’s response to his first assassination attempt. Still, Trump in recent months had continued to attack Zuckerberg publicly.
And Altman, who is in a legal dispute with AI rival Elon Musk, has said he is “not that worried” about the Tesla CEO’s influence in the incoming administration. Musk, an early OpenAI investor and board member, sued the artificial intelligence company earlier this year alleging that the maker of ChatGPT betrayed its founding aims of benefiting the public good rather than pursuing profits.