Big Tech Embraces Trump

“If you look at some of these internet people, I know so many of them, Elon is so terrific. But I know, now all of them, you know they all hated me in my first term, and now they’re kissing my ass. It’s true. All of them. It’s true.”

-President Donald Trump speaking at a University of Alabama commencement speech on May 2, 2025

 Key Takeaways

• Big Tech corporations and executives are engaging in deliberate campaigns to ingratiate themselves with the Trump administration, heaping excessive praise on Trump while going along with his unpopular and authoritarian policies.
• The enmeshment of Big Tech and the Trump administration is undermining essential government functions and sacrificing essential public protections, prioritizing the enrichment of a handful of tech billionaires and increasing corporate profits over serving the broader public interest.
• Among those ingratiating themselves with Trump are some of the biggest Big Tech corporations, including Amazon, Apple, Google, Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia, OpenAI, Oracle, Palantir, and corporations headed by Elon Musk, including X (formerly Twitter), SpaceX, and Tesla.
• Conservatively, Big Tech has spent at least $653 million to win favor with Trump and Republicans – a number that is expected to grow with future disclosures and as the 2026 midterms approach.

Introduction

“President Trump will lead our country into the age of A.I., and I am eager to support his efforts to ensure America stays ahead,” OpenAI CEO Sam Altman announced in December 2024 when giving a $1 million donation to Trump’s inaugural fund.

Then, days before the inauguration, Tools for Humanity Corporation – a startup Altman co-founded – made a $5 million donation to MAGA Inc, a Trump-backing super PAC. It was one of the largest corporate donations the super PAC received after the election and before the inauguration, matched at the time only by United Healthcare. It would later be dwarfed by the whopping $25 million the super PAC received from another OpenAI executive, Greg Brockman, and his wife Ann.

A clearer picture of what it means for Trump to “lead our country into the age of AI” is now coming into focus.

In the opening days of the US war with Iran, Altman struck a “rushed” deal with the Pentagon for military use of OpenAI’s technology. The deal followed the refusal by OpenAI rival and Pentagon contractor Anthropic to allow its AI technology to be used for mass domestic surveillance or fully autonomous weaponry. While OpenAI insists “safeguards” against federal misuse are in place, the full details of OpenAI’s deal to replace Anthropic have not been disclosed.

OpenAI and Altman are among several self-serving Big Tech corporations and executives that have fully embraced President Trump, tying their fortunes to obediently serving the administration’s authoritarian agenda.

The dangerous synergies of an authoritarian White House supported and supercharged by Big Tech titans puts on full display the risk of concentrated and excessive corporate and oligarchic power.

Big Tech’s products are now being deployed to automate unprovoked warfare, generate and spread viral misinformation, torment workers, target immigrants (and anyone standing up for them), and surveil Americans at an unprecedented scale.

The many favors Big Tech’s “ass kissing” has already won include:

• White House endorsement of nonexistent federal standards preempting of state laws regulating AI and an executive order intended to thwart state and local AI regulations;
• The Trump administration’s endorsement of the accelerated construction of AI data centers requiring immense levels of power generation as an excuse for gutting anti-pollution protections, despite widespread public disapproval;
• A massive retreat from federal enforcement against Big Tech’s lawbreaking amid authoritarian “law and order” crackdowns deploying ICE and the National Guard against immigrants, protestors, and wildly exaggerated levels of street crime;
• Expanded federal contracts, including AI tools pitched as replacements for the more than 148,000 federal workers recklessly fired or forced out by DOGE and other dangerous deregulatory initiatives;
• The appointment of nine Big Tech billionaires with a combined wealth of $900 billion to the President’s Counsel of Advisors on Science and Technology, including Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, Google’s Sergey Brin, Oracle’s Larry Ellison and Safra Catz, and Nvidia’s Jensen Huang – and just one actual scientist.
• A White House effort to force Big Tech’s deregulatory demands on the rest of the world by exploiting so-called “trade” policy to undermine protections abroad.

Now Big Tech corporations and billionaires are spending big on politics to sustain their cozy relationship with the Trump administration and to thwart efforts to restrain Big Tech’s power.

The public must recognize and remember the role these corporations are playing – and prioritize a vision of the future that breaks down, rather than reinforces, Big Tech power. After all, our political system, flawed as it may be, is still ostensibly built to carry out the will of the American people – not the corporations and the handful of tech billionaires enriching themselves at our expense.

The Inauguration Big Tech Bought

Big Tech’s full embrace of President Trump made its public debut at the January 20, 2025 inaugural ceremony, where the spectacle of Silicon Valley billionaires and executives flanking Donald Trump and Vice President JB Vance affirmed the fealty of the wealthiest corporations ever to exist under the newly reelected and unrestrained president.

Just a few days earlier, outgoing President Joe Biden had given a farewell address warning of oligarchy, “the dangers of the concentration of technology, power, and wealth” and the emergence of an incipient “tech-industrial complex.”

When asked about Biden’s warning and the Big Tech billionaires attending the inauguration, Trump responded, “I think they deserted him. […] They were all with him, every one of them. Now they’re all with me. […] They’re not going to get anything from me. I don’t need money, but I do want the Nation to do well. And they’re smart people. And they have—you know, they create a lot of jobs.”

Table 1: Big Tech executives who attended Trump’s inauguration and inaugural fund donations

Inauguration Attendee	Big Tech Corporation	Inauguration Donation
Sam Altman	OpenAI	$1,000,000
Jeff Bezos	Amazon	$1,000,000
Tim Cook	Apple	$1,000,000
Shou Zi Chew	ByteDance (TikTok)	$50,000*
Dara Khosrowshahi	Uber	$2,000,000
Elon Musk	Tesla, SpaceX, xAI	$1,000,000
Sundar Pichai	Alphabet (Google)	$1,000,000
Mark Zuckerberg	Meta (Facebook, Instagram)	$1,000,000
TOTAL		$8,050,000

Source: FEC disclosures and *Politico

Additional million-dollar Big Tech donors to Trump’s inaugural festivities include Adobe, Broadcom, C3.AI, Intuit, Micron Technology, Nvidia, Palantir CEO Alex Karp, Perplexity, and Thiel-allied venture capitalists Ken Howery and Keith Rabois.

Not including cryptocurrency corporations and executives, technology corporations and executives collectively contributed $35 million toward Trump’s record-breaking $239 million inauguration haul – more than double the previous record (Trump’s first inauguration, which raised $107 million). (See appendix.) Crypto corporations and executives kicked in an additional $15 million.

Big Tech Backing Trump in 2024

Big Tech’s embrace of Trump began well before Election Day.

Billionaire executive Elon Musk most famously and ostentatiously became a full-throated Trump supporter following the July 13, 2025 assassination attempt – and ultimately spent a whopping $290 million backing his candidacy. But Musk was not alone.

Billionaire venture capitalist Marc Andreessen gave more than $5 million to Trump-backing groups. Andreessen’s business partner Ben Horowitz gave $2.5 million to a Trump-backing super PAC (and, subsequently, $2.5 million to a super PAC backing Kamala Harris). Musk allies Antonio Gracias and Joe Lonsdale (a Palantir co-founder) each gave $1 million to Musk’s Trump-backing America PAC, as did TikTok investor Douglas Leone. David Sacks, a Silicon Valley venture capitalist and former PayPal executive with ties to Musk and Palantir co-founder Peter Thiel gave $400,000 to Trump-backing super PACs and hosted a $12 million fundraiser for Trump’s campaign.

And while billionaire Amazon founder Jeff Bezos did not contribute financially to Trump, his decision in late October to withhold the Washington Post’s anticipated endorsement of Kamala Harris was widely viewed as a gift to then-candidate Trump. Within hours of the decision becoming public, executives from the Bezos-owned aerospace corporation (and SpaceX rival) Blue Origin were meeting with Trump. A Washington Post editor who resigned in protest accused Bezos of arranging the Blue Origin meeting as a “quid pro quo” in exchange for the dropped endorsement.

Trump’s selection of JD Vance as his running mate was another sign of the coming synergies between the administration and Big Tech. A onetime tech-investing venture capitalist himself, the Republican senator from Ohio brought strong relationships with tech executives, including Andreessen, Musk, Sacks, and Thiel.

As election day approached, executives representing Amazon, Apple, and Google were already reaching out to Trump. During an appearance on the Joe Rogan Experience, Trump boasted that Google CEO Sundar Pichai called him praise Trump’s campaign appearance at McDonald’s.

Big Tech Billionaires Bend the Knee to Broligarchs

As an in-group of MAGA-friendly tech executives coalesced around the newly reelected Trump, Big Tech corporations and executives did everything in their power to join the “broligarchy” surrounding incoming administration.

Trump tasked Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, a tech entrepreneur and former Republican presidential candidate, with staffing and operating the reckless DOGE initiative, which would lead to illegal mass firings of federal workers, gut government services, and increase rather than reduce costs. The DOGE leaders lobbied for the involvement of Russell Vought, the Project 2025 architect behind Trump’s efforts to dismantle the government from within from a his eventual post as director of the powerful White House Office of Management and Budget. Musk allies, including Lonsdale, Gracias, and Boring Company President Steve Davis, help staff and structure DOGE along with Andreessen and former Uber CEO Travis Kalanick.

To lead tech policy for the transition, Trump tapped Michael Kratsios, a Thiel ally who served in Trump’s first term and is a former executive for Scale AI, and Gail Slater, a policy advisor to Vance and former Internet Association lobbyist. Both served in the White House during Trump’s first term.

Scale AI is a startup that has been accused of running “digital sweatshops” abroad and donated $125,000 toward Trump’s inaugural fund. Its workers label data to aid the development of large language models for Big Tech corporations, including OpenAI, Microsoft, and Meta, which in June hired the startup’s founder and purchased a 49% stake in Scale AI for $15 billion. Trump would later select Kratsios to lead the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and Slater to lead the Justice Department’s Antitrust Division.

Kratsios also is a former board member for the Foundation for American Innovation, a Silicon Valley think tank that has advocated for using A.I. to automate government jobs and criticized the Biden administration as “much too risk averse” in terms of its efforts to implement A.I.

Slater was at first seen as a strong antitrust enforcer willing to challenge Big Tech monopolies. However, she departed the DOJ after a little over a year, seemingly because she was seen as an impediment to Trump-allied lobbyists pushing big corporate mergers.

Billionaire David Sacks, meanwhile, was appointed by Trump to serve as the White House AI and Crypto Czar. The role categorizes Sacks as a “special government employee,” which the administration has used as vehicle for avoiding the ethics and transparency requirements and prohibitions against self-dealing that normally apply to government workers. Through Craft Ventures, the venture capital fund Sacks co-founded, Sacks boasts “notable investments” in Big Tech corporations including Airbnb, Facebook, Palantir, SpaceX, Uber, and X (formerly Twitter). Despite claims he sold most of his AI assets, a damning New York Times investigation later found he retained at least 449 stakes in companies with ties to AI that could be aided directly or indirectly by his policies.

Once Trump’s electoral victory was secured, Big Tech’s efforts to ingratiate themselves with the reelected president started ramping up in earnest. The executives who four years earlier had released strong statements against the January 6 MAGA insurrection at the Capitol were singing a different tune. Jeff Bezos, Apple CEO Tim Cook, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Google CEO Sundar Pichai, and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella all posted glowing messages personally congratulating Trump on his victory. (Zuckerberg and Pichai did not post messages congratulating Biden in 2020.)

Over the month before Trump’s second swearing-in ceremony, Big Tech billionaires and executives made the pilgrimage to Florida to meet and dine with president-elect Trump at Mar-a-Lago, including Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, Apple’s Tim Cook, Google’s Sundar Pichai and Sergey Brin, Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, and Microsoft’s Bill Gates.

Climate, Changed

After the billionaire-packed inauguration, Trump signed more than two dozen executive orders in the Oval Office.

One executive order initiated the formal withdrawal of the United States from the Paris climate agreement – a repeat of an action Trump took in 2017 during his first term. Back in 2017, the withdrawal drew public criticism from Big Tech executives who appeared to take climate commitments seriously, including Cook, Pichai, Zuckerberg, and even Musk, who quit his membership to Trump’s business councils over the action and posted on Twitter, “Climate change is real. Leaving Paris is not good for America or the world.” Bezos and Gates had spent billions of their wealth on climate initiatives, and numerous Big Tech corporations, including Amazon, Google, and Meta, had made ambitious plans to reduce emissions and increase their reliance on clean energy.

In 2025, they said nothing.

The day after the inauguration, OpenAI’s Sam Altman joined Trump, Oracle Chairman Larry Ellison, and Softbank CEO Masayoshi Son to announce “Stargate,” a $500 billion project to build AI data centers projected to demand more power than the entire state of New Hampshire. (The project has since been mired in disagreements and delays.) Apple plans to spend another $500 billion on AI infrastructure, and Google plans to spend $75 billion. A recent projection suggest AI data centers will consume as much energy as nearly a quarter of all households in the US.

Six months later, the Trump White House released an AI Action Plan at a summit sponsored by David Sacks’ “All-In” podcast. The plan rejected “radical climate dogma and bureaucratic red tape” and discouraged the “premature decommissioning” of power plants.

Big Tech’s mad scramble for energy to power AI datacenters made the abandonment of climate principles politically convenient. Greenpeace found that at least five coal-fired power plants that had been scheduled for retirement will continue to operate – in part because of the demand for energy from expanding data centers used to power AI.

To audiences outside the hard core climate deniers in the Trump administration, Big Tech still shamelessly deploys climate rhetoric to greenwash AI, pitching it as a potential solution to the climate crisis, even as the technology is being used to accelerate drilling for fossil fuels and spread climate misinformation.

In 2026, Big Tech executives representing Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Meta, OpenAI, Oracle, and xAI joined President Trump in a public relations stunt that acknowledged the unsustainable surge in energy demand from data centers – and sought to tamp down public discontent by making a show of executives signing an unenforceable and voluntary agreement to power data centers themselves.

Big Tech’s MAGAfication

The abandonment of pledges to combat climate catastrophe while chasing profits by building power-hungry, pollution-prone data centers is just one example of Big Tech’s MAGA turn.

Big Tech corporations have fallen in line with Trump’s attacks on diversity, accelerated and enabled the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) crackdowns and military aggression, and fueled Elon Musk’s destructive and reckless DOGE initiative. They’ve spent millions toward Trump’s inauguration, future presidential library, and Trump-backing super PACs and untold sums sponsoring Trump’s projects, including the 2025 military parade held on Trump’s birthday and the destruction and replacement of the East Wing of the White House with a “Golden Ballroom.” Big Tech executives, meanwhile, are maximizing their face time with the president, not only attending the inauguration but regularly appearing at White House events, lending their apparent support to numerous administration policies.

Quantifiable non-election gifts from Big Tech to Trump – Google and Meta’s $22 million settlements plus Amazon’s $28 million payment to Melania Trump for a documentary and Microsoft’s $1 million sponsorship of the World Economic Forum’s USA House total at least $73 million. The undisclosed gifts may well be much more.

Table 2: Big Tech Corporations Pledging Gifts to Trump

Corporation	East Wing Demolition / Golden Ballroom	Trump Library	Trump’s Birthday Military Parade	White House Easter Egg Roll	Other Payments / Gifts
Alphabet and Google	Yes ($22 million)			2025 and 2026, amount undisclosed
Amazon	Yes (amount undisclosed)		Yes (amount undisclosed)	2025, amount undisclosed	Melania movie, The Apprentice licensing deal (at least $28 million)
Apple	Yes (amount undisclosed)
Google / Alphabet	Yes (amount undisclosed)
HP Inc	Yes (amount undisclosed)
Meta	Yes (amount undisclosed)	Yes ($22 million)		2025 and 2026, amount undisclosed
Micron Technology	Yes (amount undisclosed)
Microsoft	Yes (amount undisclosed)				USA House sponsorship ($1 million)
Nvidia	Yes (amount undisclosed)
Palantir Technologies	Yes (amount undisclosed)		Yes (amount undisclosed)

Big Tech also has emerged as a prolific pro-Trump political spender. During the 2024 elections and ahead of the 2026 midterms, the biggest Big Tech corporations, executives, and investors have poured over half a billion dollars toward Trump and Republicans. (Big Tech corporations and executives additionally have pledged $100 million toward super PAC to attack candidates who support AI regulation, while Meta has launched a $65 million super PAC focused on state races in California.)

Table 3: Big Tech Political Spending Backing Trump and Republicans

Donor	2024 Elections	2026 Elections	Sum
Elon Musk (and Tesla and SpaceX)	$291,000,000	$70,000,000	$361,000,000
Jeffrey and Janine Yass (ByteDance investor)	$100,000,000	$16,000,000	$116,000,000
OpenAI and executives (Greg Brockman and spouse Anna)		$25,000,000	$25,000,000
Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) including Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz	$8,844,600	$5,000,000	$13,844,600
Jan Koum (WhatsApp founder)	$5,100,000	$1,000,000	$6,100,000
Tools for Humanity Corporation (Sam Altman / Worldcoin)		$5,000,000	$5,000,000
Asha Jadeja (Silicon Valley VC and early Google investor)		$5,000,000	$5,000,000
Doug Leone (Sequia Capital)	$3,300,000		$3,300,000
Paradigm Operations and Matt Huang		$2,000,000	$2,000,000
Antonio Gracias (VC investor and Tesla and SpaceX board member)	$1,000,000	$1,000,000	$2,000,000
William Ford (Bytedance board member, General Atlantic CEO)		$1,250,000	$1,250,000
Nvidia	$1,000,000		$1,000,000
MicroStrategy		$1,000,000	$1,000,000
Advanced Micro Devices		$1,000,000	$1,000,000
Alex Karp (Palantir CEO)		$1,000,000	$1,000,000
Lonsdale Enterprises (Joe Lonsdale, Palantir co-founder)	$1,000,000		$1,000,000
Safra Catz (Oracle CEO)	$1,000,000
Total	$412,244,600	$134,250,000	$545,494,600

Source: FEC data

Together, Big Tech’s electoral spending and non-electoral gifts to Trump total $653 million.

Below are some of the most high-profile ways some of the biggest Big Tech corporations are backing President Trump.

Amazon

“I’m very hopeful — he seems to have a lot of energy around reducing regulation. And my point of view is, if I can help him do that, I’m going to help him, because we do have too much regulation in this country… What I’ve seen so far is he is calmer than he was the first time — more confident, more settled.”

-Amazon founder and chairman and Jeff Bezos after meeting with Trump before the inauguration

• During the pre-inauguration meeting where Bezos and his fiancée Lauren Sánchez met with Donald and Melania Trump, Melania pitched Bezos on the eponymous documentary. Amazon subsequently agreed to pay $40 million to license the film – more than the company had ever spent on a documentary and nearly triple the next-closest offer by Disney, $14 million. According to the Wall Street Journal, Melania Trump would directly be paid more than 70% of the $40 million. Amazon also spent an eyebrow-raising $35 million promoting the documentary’s theatrical release. As of early March, the film earned $16.6 million In January, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy attended a private screening of the Melania film at the White House that was held just hours after federal agents killed Alex Pretti.
• Amazon Prime Video also made a deal to stream episodes of Trump’s reality TV show, “The Apprentice.” As an executive producer of the show, Trump is likely to profit from the deal.
• An internal memo circulated within Amazon before the inauguration signaled the company intended to roll back diversity initiatives. Mentions of inclusion and diversity were scrubbed from the corporation’s annual report, and the minimized descriptions on its website about “Equity for Black people,” “Diversity, equity and inclusion” and “LGBTQ+ rights.” Mentions of the term “transgender” were removed entirely.
• In addition to its $1 million inauguration donation, Amazon made a $1 million in-kind donation by streaming the inaugural ceremony on Amazon Video and has spent undisclosed sums sponsoring demolition and replacement of the East Wing of the White House with Trump’s “Golden Ballroom,” Trump’s 2025 military parade, and the White House Easter egg
• An Amazon plan to display cost increases attributable to Trump’s tariffs on its website was apparently abandoned after Trump found out and made an angry phone call to Bezos. A White House official said Trump was “pissed” when he learned about Amason’s plan. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt characterized the tariff labels as a “hostile and political act.” Trump later told reporters after the plan was dropped that “Jeff Bezos was very nice. He was terrific. He solved the problem very quickly. Good guy.”
• Amazon Web Services gave the Trump administration a $1 billion discount on cloud computing services. One administration official remarked in the press release announcing the deal, “Through this unique partnership, the federal government is poised to deliver on President Trump’s AI Action Plan and solidify its position as the global AI leader.”
• Amazon Web Services sold $25 million in cloud services to ICE in September 2025 and $39 million in cloud services to Customs and Border Protection.
• Amazon’s Jassy was among the many Big Tech executives and billionaires who attended the White House dinner organized to strengthen US ties with Saudi Arabia, including the promise of a $1 trillion investment in the US and its corporations by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
• Meanwhile at the Washington Post, owner Jeff Bezos’s non-endorsement in the election would be just the first change seen as a favor to Trump. One month after Trump’s inauguration, Bezos announced the Post’s editorial priorities would shift toward opinion pieces that favor “Personal liberties and free markets,” a clear signal that the paper’s ideological alignment would be directed to track more closely with the interests of Big Business. One year later, the Post abruptly laid off about one third of its work force. Martin Baron, formerly the Post’s executive editor, said, “Bezos’s sickening efforts to curry favor with President Trump have left an especially ugly stain of their own. This is a case study in near-instant, self-inflicted brand destruction.”
• Former Amazon executive and Blue Origin CEO David Limp joined the September White House dinner attended by Big Tech executives.

Apple

“I want to thank you for setting the tone such that we could make a major [$600 billion] investment in the United States and have some key manufacturing, advanced manufacturing, here. I think that says a lot about your focus and your leadership and your focus on innovation. I also want to thank you for helping American companies around the world. This is a very key, key thing, and I really enjoy working with your Administration.”

-Apple CEO Tim Cook  praising Trump, at gathering of Big Tech executives at the White House

• In addition to CEO Tim Cook’s $1 million inauguration donation, Apple has spent undisclosed sums sponsoring demolition and replacement of the East Wing of the White House with Trump’s “Golden Ballroom.”
• Following Trump’s executive order re-naming the Gulf of Mexico the “Gulf of America,” Apple changed the label in its Apple Maps app to reflect Trump’s preference.
• Following pressure from the Trump administration, including a letter from Attorney General Pam Bondi promising not to prosecute, Apple restored user access to TikTok on its app store despite this being an apparent violation of the 2024 law banning TikTok.
• Two months after Trump took office, Apple modified instructions for AI developers. Mentions of “systemic racism” were removed from instructions for data labelers, who also were told no longer to flag “intolerance” as “harmful.” The list of “controversial topics” was expanded to include “DEI policies, vaccines and elections.”
• During a visit to the White House to announce Apple’s pledge to invest $600 billion in expanding its manufacturing capacity in the US, Cook presented Trump with the unusual gift of a 24-karat gold plaque. Apple increased its investment pledge by $100 billion after al $500 billion investment plan announced earlier was revealed primarily to be the regular cost of running its business. This follows the administration’s announcement that it would impose a 100% tariff on computer chips and semiconductors unless corporations increase manufacturing in the US.
• Cook also attended Trump’s United Kingdom state dinner at St. George Hall.
• Cook also was among the many Big Tech executives and billionaires who attended the White House dinner organized to strengthen US ties with Saudi Arabia, including the promise of a $1 trillion investment in the US and its corporations by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
• In January, Cook attended a private screening of the Melania film at the White House that was held just hours after federal agents killed Alex Pretti, igniting internal criticism from Apple employees about the company’s unwillingness to oppose the administration’s authoritarian and abusive immigration enforcement practices.
• Following pressure from Trump’s Attorney General Pam Bondi, Apple blocked apps people used to crowdsource ICE sightings in their communities.
• Trump responded to news of Cook stepping down as Apple’s CEO with a post on Truth Social saying he’d “always been a big fan of Tim Cook” which included an anecdote about how “impressed with myself” Trump was “to have the head of Apple calling to ‘kiss my ass’,” when Cook called him during his first term with a request for a favor for Apple. “During my five years as President,” Trump continued, “Tim would call me, but never too much, and I would help him where I could.”

Google / Alphabet

“It’s a real incredible inflection point right now in AI and the fact that your Administration is supporting our companies instead of fighting with them — it’s hugely important. It’s a global race and I think we’re at the cusp where these AI models are about to become profoundly useful… so we’re very grateful for your Administration’s support.”

-Billionaire Google co-founder Sergey Brin praising Trump at a September gathering of Big Tech executives at the White House

• In addition to Google’s $1 million inauguration donation, parent company Alphabet agreed to pay $22 million toward the demolition and replacement of the East Wing of the White House to settle Trump’s lawsuit against YouTube for suspending his account after the January 6 insurrection. YouTube also sponsored the 2025 White House Easter egg
• Following Trump’s executive order re-naming the Gulf of Mexico the “Gulf of America,” Google changed the label in its Google Maps app to reflect Trump’s preference. Google also removed cultural holidays, including Pride and Black History Month, from its calendar app and prohibited the text of the phrase “impeach Trump” from autocomplete suggestions in its search engine.
• Weeks after the inauguration, Google canceled its policies for increasing the diversity of its workforce. Google also dropped its funding for 58 diversity-related nonprofit groups
• Following pressure from the Trump administration, including a letter from Attorney General Pam Bondi promising not to prosecute, Google restored user access to TikTok on its app store despite this being an apparent violation of the 2024 law banning TikTok.
• Google also dropped its pledge not to use or develop AI for weapons or surveillance, a commitment made in response to a push from workers during Trump’s first term, resulting in the company’s withdrawal from its Pentagon contract.
• Google’s AI was revealed to be one of the technologies used by the Department of Homeland Security to produce propaganda videos promoting the surge in ICE enforcement against immigrants.
• Following pressure from Trump’s Attorney General Pam Bondi, Google blocked apps people used to crowdsource ICE sightings in their communities.
• Google received $530,000 from ICE for cloud products in January 2026.
• At a September gathering of Big Tech executives at the White House, Google CEO Sundar Pichai also praised Trump: “The AI moment is one of the most transformative moments any of us have ever seen or will see in our lifetimes, so making sure the U.S. is at the forefront — and I think that your Administration is investing a lot already. The AI Action Plan, under your leadership, I think is a great start, and we look forward to working together — and thanks for your leadership.”
• Pichai also thanked Trump for his administration’s role in reducing penalties sought in the federal antitrust lawsuit alleging Google engaged in illegal monopolistic conduct.
• After the Pentagon announced it was severing ties with AI contractor Anthropic and declaring the company a supply chain risk, Google expanded its Pentagon work, rolling out a new tool allowing military and government personnel to develop custom AI agents for unclassified work.
• Before Trump signed an executive order seeking to thwart state efforts to regulate AI, Google lobbied the White House to pre-empt state legislative efforts to protect the public from AI harms.
• Google President Ruth Porat, meanwhile, also has praised Trump. Speaking on a panel after Interior Secretary Doug Burgum complained about Silicon Valley supporting “the climate extremist agenda” and advocated for coal and fossil-fuel-powered AI data centers, Porat remarked that Burgum’s comments were “fantastic” and gave a presentation that included Google’s advocacy for using natural gas to power AI data centers. According to Google’s own reports, the company’s emissions have risen 51% over the past five years.
• Porat also attended a White House dinner organized to strengthen US ties with Saudi Arabia.
• Google has been complying with the Department of Homeland Security’s administrative subpoenas seeking information on users who oppose ICE.
• In March, Google’s Brin was among the nine Big Tech billionaires Trump announced would join the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology.

Meta Platforms

“The United States has the opportunity to lead the world in AI… I’m honored to join the President’s council and work with other industry leaders to help make this happen.”

-Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s statement following his March 2026 appointment to the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology

• In a Bloomberg interview ahead of the election, Zuckerberg declined to endorse either Harris or Trump, and described Trump standing up after the assassination attempt as “one of the most badass things I’ve ever seen in my life.”
• The source of Trump’s infamous racist claim about Haitian immigrants eating peoples’ pets in Springfield, Ohio, during the 2024 presidential debate with Biden was a viral rumor posted on Facebook.
• In January before Trump’s inauguration, Meta announced it would modify its content moderation policy – which it claimed had been “overly enforced” – and ended third-party fact checking. The new rules were criticized for allowing hate speech. Meta’s independent Oversight Board later noted the changes “were announced hastily, in a departure from regular procedure, with no public information shared as to what, if any, prior human rights due diligence the company performed” and criticized the company for not taking down posts that incited violence against Muslims and immigrants.
• “We’re getting rid of a number of restrictions on topics like immigration, gender identity and gender that are the subject of frequent political discourse and debate,” said Republican lawyer Joel Kaplan, a friend of Justice Kavanaugh newly promoted to Meta’s top policy role.
• In November after the election, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg met privately with Trump and Stephen Miller at Mar-a-Lago. Zuckerberg was reportedly “amenable” to the coming crackdowns on immigration and diversity that Miller said were coming, and that Zuckerberg signaled he would not interfere with Trump’s agenda. On Fox News, Miller said Zuckerberg “has been very clear about his desire to be a supporter of, and a participant in, this change we’re seeing.”
• Zuckerberg previewed for Miller Meta’s diversity, equity, and inclusion policy rollbacks before making them official on the day before Trump signed an executive order rolling back diversity initiatives for federal contractors.
• In addition to Meta’s $1 million inauguration donation, the company agreed to pay $25 million to settle Trump’s lawsuit against Meta for suspending his account after the January 6 insurrection. Out of the total, $22 million is slated to fund a future Trump presidential library. Meta also contributed an undisclosed amount toward the demolition and replacement of the East Wing of the White House with Trump’s “Golden Ballroom” and sponsored the 2025 White House Easter egg
• Meta appointed Trump ally and Ultimate Fighting Championship CEO Dana White to its board of directors and named former Trump advisor Dina Powell McCormick to serve as the corporation’s president and vice chair, a decision Trump praised on Truth Social.
• Zuckerberg sent a text to Elon Musk on February 3, 2025 to cheer on the deregulatory DOGE effort, saying, “Looks like DOGE is making progress. […] I’ve got our teams on alert to take down content doxxing or threatening the people on your team. Let me know if there’s anything else I can do to help.” Zuckerberg’s offer to thwart “doxxing” appears to be a reference the story on DOGE employees that appeared in Wired, which Charlie Kirk mischaracterized as “doxxing” them in a post on X.
• Meta removed a Facebook page users set up to track ICE in Chicago following a request from Trump’s DOJ.
• Before Trump signed an executive order seeking to thwart state efforts to regulate AI, Meta lobbied the White House to pre-empt state legislative efforts to protect the public from AI harms.
• At a September gathering of Big Tech executives at the White House, Zuckerberg responded to Trump’s question how much Meta was investing in the US and said, “This is quite a group to get together — and I think all of the companies here are making huge investments in the country in order to build out data centers and infrastructure to power the next wave of innovation… [Meta is investing] at least $600 billion through 2028 in the U.S.” Zuckerberg’s microphone later caught him apologizing to Trump, apparently about the investment number, saying, “sorry, I wasn’t ready …I wasn’t sure what number you wanted to go with.”
• Meta has been complying with the Department of Homeland Security’s administrative subpoenas seeking information on Facebook and Instagram users who oppose ICE.
• The nonprofit Chan Zuckerberg Initiative also eliminated DEI teams and ended social advocacy funding, which included work on racial equity and immigration reform, and pulled funding from the tuition-free private school founded to serve a low-income, majority-Latino population in East Paolo Alto.
• In March, Zuckerberg was among the nine Big Tech billionaires Trump announced would join the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology.

Microsoft

“I felt like [Trump] was energized and looking forward to helping to drive innovation… I was frankly impressed with how well he showed a lot of interest in the issues I brought up.”

-Billionaire Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates praising Trump ahead of the inauguration

• Before the inauguration, Nadella and Microsoft President Brad Smith had a “productive meeting” with Trump and Elon Musk at Mar-a-Lago where they reportedly discussed cybersecurity, technology policy, and Microsoft’s plans to invest $80 billion in AI infrastructure “creating new American jobs for American workers and advancing American competitiveness both in the U.S. and abroad.”
• Gates, who has spent billions of his fortune towards addressing climate change, released a memo seen as downplaying the possible effects ahead of the United Nations climate summit.
• In addition to Microsoft’s $1 million inauguration donation, the company pledged to contribute an undisclosed amount toward the demolition and replacement of the East Wing of the White House. Microsoft also spent up to $1 million sponsoring the “USA House” for Trump’s visit to the 2026 World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
• Microsoft quietly dropped its practice of diversity reporting and removed diversity, equity, and inclusion from employee performance reviews.
• Following Trump’s executive order re-naming the Gulf of Mexico the “Gulf of America,” Microsoft changed the label in its Bing Maps app to reflect Trump’s preference.
• Microsoft is benefitting from the surge in cloud spending from ICE, which ordered $38 million in Microsoft software.
• Before Trump signed an executive order seeking to thwart state efforts to regulate AI, Microsoft called for the White House to pre-empt state legislative efforts to protect the public from AI harms.
• For the first time, Microsoft gave in to a federal law enforcement request to access encrypted data on a user’s laptop. The FBI request stemmed from an investigation into allegedly misappropriated COVID relief funds in Guam.
• At a September gathering of Big Tech executives at the White House, Nadella praised Trump, stating, “Thank you so much for bringing us all together, and the policies that you have put in place for the United States to lead. One of the things that I think has made this industry unique is not only the innovation, but it’s the market access that you have obviously championed for us all over the world and also the trust the world has on American technology. I think that everything that you’re doing in terms of setting in place the platform where the rest of the world can not only use our technology, but trust our technology more than any other alternative, is perhaps the most important issue — and you and your policies are really help a lot.” Ahead of the gathering, Microsoft announced increasing access to AI in schools, an initiative tied to the Trump administration’s Presidential AI Challenge.

Nvidia

“America’s unique advantage that no country could possibly have is President Trump.”

-Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang following the unveiling of the Trump administration’s AI Action Plan

• In addition to Nvidia’s $1 million inauguration donation, Huang pledged to contribute an undisclosed amount toward the demolition and replacement of the East Wing of the White House with Trump’s “Golden Ballroom.” The corporation also pledged to support “Trump accounts” for children of employees with a $1,000 matching gift.
• Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang forged a mutually beneficial relationship with White House Crypto and AI Czar David Sacks. Huang lobbied for reduced export restrictions on Nvidia’s AI chips, arguing that expanding access to the chips around the world would benefit Sacks’s AI investment. Sacks then facilitated deals to sell chips to the United Arab Emirates and, ultimately – following a meeting between Huang, Sacks, and Trump – to China.
• Nvidia agreed to pay 15% of the revenue from its China sales to the US government.
• The loosening of restrictions on exports of Nvidia’s AI chips also followed Huang attending a $1 million-a-head fundraising dinner at Mar-a-Lago for Trump’s MAGA Inc super PAC.
• Huang also attended Trump’s United Kingdom state dinner at St. George Hall.
• Before Trump signed an executive order seeking to thwart state efforts to regulate AI, Huang outspokenly opposed state legislative efforts to protect the public from AI harms.
• After the Trump administration directed the federal government directly to invest $8.9 billion in rival chipmaker Intel, Nvidia followed suit with a $5 billion investment of its own, an agreement the Wall Street Journal described as showing “how some industry executives view efforts to help Intel as a way to win favor with the Trump administration.”
• Huang also was among the many Big Tech executives and billionaires who attended the White House dinner organized to strengthen US ties with Saudi Arabia, including the promise of a $1 trillion investment in the US and its corporations by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
• In March, Huang was among the nine Big Tech billionaires Trump announced would join the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology.

OpenAI

“Thank you for being such a pro-business, pro-innovation President. It’s a very refreshing change. We’re very excited to see what you’re doing to make our companies and our entire country so successful. The investment that’s happening here, the ability to get the power of the industry back in the United States, is going to set us up for a long period of great success leading the world — and I don’t think that would be happening without your leadership.”

-OpenAI CEO Sam Altman praising Trump at a September gathering of Big Tech executives at the White House

• “President Trump will lead our country into the age of A.I., and I am eager to support his efforts to ensure America stays ahead,” OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said in December 2024 when giving a $1 million donation to Trump’s inaugural fund. He was among the first from the tech sector to announce a donation.
• In addition to Altman’s $1 million inauguration donation, a different Altman-led company, Tools for Humanity, made a $5 million donation to Trump’s MAGA Inc super PAC. OpenAI President Greg Brockman and his wife Anna also gave $25 million to MAGA Inc.
• The relationship between OpenAI and Trump was forged in part through Doug Burgum, the former Microsoft executive and former governor of North Dakota who Trump would tap to lead the Interior Department. Burgum arranged a meeting between Trump and Brockman in June before the 2024 election during which the company’s video-generating Sora platform was previewed for candidate Trump. Since taking office, Trump has become particularly fond of posting AI-generated videos.
• Ahead of the inauguration, Altman met with Howard Lutnick, who Trump had nominated to become Commerce Secretary.
• Altman also attended Trump’s inauguration, albeit in the overflow room instead of sharing the stage with fellow Big Tech executives.
• The day after Trump’s inauguration, OpenAI’s Sam Altman joined Trump, Oracle Chairman Larry Ellison, and Softbank CEO Masayoshi son to announce “Stargate,” a $500 billion project to build AI data centers projected to demand more power than the entire state of New Hampshire. “For AGI [artificial general intelligence] to get built here, to create hundreds of thousands of jobs, to create a new industry centered here, we wouldn’t be able to do this without you, Mr. President, and I’m thrilled that we get to,” Altman said during the announcement, which he pitched to Trump before the inauguration with the claim “artificial general intelligence” would be achieved during this administration.
• Days after the inauguration, Altman posted on X, “watching @potus more carefully recently has really changed my perspective on him (i wish i had done more of my own thinking and definitely fell in the npc trap). i’m not going to agree with him on everything, but i think he will be incredible for the country in many ways!”
• Weeks after Trump took office, Altman described the new administration as a “breath of fresh air” for the tech industry.
• Before Trump signed an executive order seeking to thwart state efforts to regulate AI, OpenAI lobbied the White House to pre-empt state legislative efforts to protect the public from AI harms.
• Altman also apparently supported provisions of Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” to pre-empt state AI legislation, telling Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) at a hearing, “it is very difficult to imagine us figuring out how to comply with 50 different sets of regulation.”
• Altman met with Trump at Mar-a-Lago in the spring, where he attended a $1 million-a-head dinner, and at the president’s New Jersey golf club in the summer of 2025.
• Altman also attended Trump’s United Kingdom state dinner at St. George Hall.
• In a long post on X on July 4, 2025, Altman declared himself to be “politically homeless” and criticized the Democratic Party. “I believe in techno-capitalism. We should encourage people to make tons of money and then also find ways to widely distribute wealth and share the compounding magic of capitalism,” he wrote. “I’d rather hear from candidates about how they are going to make everyone have the stuff billionaires have instead of how they are going to eliminate billionaires.” He has reportedly told people he could see himself voting Republican in the next election.
• In June 2025, OpenAI announced its $200 million federal contract “to help the Defense Department identify and prototype how frontier AI can transform its administrative operations, from improving how service members and their families get health care, to streamlining how they look at program and acquisition data, to supporting proactive cyber defense.”
• The Department of Homeland Security has been using OpenAI’s GPT-4 model to review resumes of ICE job applicants.
• Brockman also praised Trump at the same dinner: “We’ve been just very impressed with how this Administration has really embraced AI. In addition to the most massive infrastructure building in history… There has been a choice of whether to approach it with optimism, and I think that that’s what I’ve really seen from this Administration, so I just wanted to say thank you for that.”
• On X, Brockman posted following his MAGA Inc super PAC donation, “[I]t’s been great to see the president’s and his administration’s willingness to engage directly with the AI community and approach emerging technology with a growth-focused mindset and goal of helping to ensure continued US leadership in AI and supporting American economic competitiveness.”
• Brockman also attended a White House dinner organized to strengthen US ties with Saudi Arabia.
• In the opening days of the US war with Iran, Altman struck a “rushed” deal with the Pentagon for military use of OpenAI’s technology. The deal followed the refusal by OpenAI rival and Pentagon contractor Anthropic to allow its AI technology to be used for mass domestic surveillance or fully autonomous weaponry. While OpenAI insists “safeguards” against federal misuse are in place, the full details of OpenAI’s deal to replace Anthropic have not been disclosed. Reports allege the replacement of Anthropic with OpenAI was politically motivated.

Oracle

“This is a most incredible time. AI is going to change everything — you hear all of us saying that — but the fact that you are our President and you recognized this right away, and you’ve unleashed American innovation and creativity — all the work you’re doing in basically every cabinet post in addition to what’s coming out of the White House — is making it possible for America to win.”

-Billionaire former Oracle CEO Safra Catz praising Trump at a September gathering of Big Tech executives at the White House

• Oracle’s billionaire co-founder and chairman Larry Ellison is a longtime ally of Trump and Musk who participated in strategizing to challenge the 2020 election and pledged $1 billion in support of Musk’s Twitter takeover.
• The day after the inauguration, OpenAI’s Sam Altman joined Trump, Ellison, and Softbank CEO Masayoshi son to announce “Stargate,” a $500 billion project to build AI data centers projected to demand more power than the entire state of New Hampshire.
• Trump has praised and supported the efforts by Ellison and his son David to build a media empire. Near the end of Trump’s first term when Oracle sought to expand its business into managing TikTok’s US data, Trump referred to Ellison as “really, a terrific guy for a long time” and referred to Oracle as a “great company.” Trump also has said, ““Larry Ellison is great, and his son David is great. They’re friends of mine […] They’re big supporters of mine.” Earlier this year, Oracle with the backing of the Trump administration, successfully closed the deal become a partial owner of TikTok and the platform’s cloud data service provider. Oracle and other investors are reportedly prepared to grant the Trump administration a $10 billion fee for brokering the TikTok deal. Oracle’s control over TikTok’s algorithm is seen as a threat to pro-Palestinian voices on the platform, and a boon to supporters of Israeli military aggression under Prime Minister and Trump ally Benjamin Netanyahu.
• Ellison’s son David, meanwhile, is the founder of Skydance Media, which the Trump administration permitted to acquire Paramount Global. Prior to the deal, Paramount, which owns the television network CBS, paid $16 million toward a future Trump presidential library to settle a lawsuit Trump filed over edits to a 60 Minutes interview with Kamala Harris. A CBS producer who worked on the interview decried the settlement as “a cowardly capitulation by the corporate leaders of Paramount” and was characterized as a “payoff” by Late Show comedian Stephen Colbert, whose CBS show Paramount canceled. Under its new ownership, the network has taken steps to appease Trump by shifting to the ideological right – and the newly merged Paramount Skydance corporation is on the verge of completing another merger, a $111 billion deal to acquire Warner Bros. Discover backed by Larry Ellison’s fortune.
• David Ellison also was among the many executives and billionaires who attended the White House dinner organized to strengthen US ties with Saudi Arabia, including the promise of a $1 trillion investment in the US and its corporations by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
• Catz has also praised Trump through Oracle press releases, stating, for example, “Thanks to the decisive actions and strong leadership of President Trump and his administration, Oracle is providing the world’s most advanced cloud and AI technology to Saudi Arabia.”
• In 2024, Catz donated $1 million to the Trump-backing Preserve America PAC.
• In March, Ellison and Catz were among the nine Big Tech billionaires Trump announced would join the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology.

Palantir Technologies

“[Trump] is actually a peace president.”

-Palantir CEO Alex Karp during his October 2025 visit to Ukraine

• Palantir’s personal ties with the Trump administration are uniquely close. Billionaire co-founder Peter Thiel supported Trump’s 2016 election and is seen as a mentor for Vice President JD Vance. Co-founder Joe Lonsdale, a close ally of Elon Musk, became a leader in the billionaire’s deregulatory DOGE efforts. White House AI and Crypto Czar David Sacks was an executive at PayPal, which Thiel also co-founded, in the company’s early days. Trump named PayPal co-founder and Thiel venture capital partner Ken Howery to serve as Ambassador to Denmark. The State Department’s Under Secretary for Economic Affairs, Jacob Helberg, previously worked as a senior advisor to Palantir CEO Alex Karp and made a $1 million donation to help elect Trump.
• In addition to Karp’s $1 million inauguration donation, Palantir pledged to contribute an undisclosed amount toward the demolition and replacement of the East Wing of the White House with Trump’s “Golden Ballroom” and Trump’s 2025 military parade.
• Thiel is reportedly among those advocating for US control of Greenland. Trump declared in his announcement nominating Thiel ally Howery to serve as Ambassador to Denmark, “For purposes of National Security and Freedom throughout the World, the United States of America feels that the ownership and control of Greenland is an absolute necessity.”
• Palantir has expanded its work across the federal government compiling data on Americans under Trump, having received more than $300 million in federal contracts since Trump took office and securing a $795 million contract with the Department of Defense and a $10 billion contract with the Army.
• The company, which has contracts with or is doing work with the State Department, the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Health and Human Services, the Education Department, the Social Security Administration, and the Treasury Department, is central to the Trump administration’s efforts to share data across the government, including controversial efforts to share IRS data with ICE for immigration enforcement.
• A tool Palantir developed for ICE “populates a map with potential deportation targets, brings up a dossier on each person, and provides a ‘confidence score’ on the person’s current address” and obtains address data via the DHS database of Medicaid enrollees. Former employees condemned the corporation’s partnership with ICE.
• On a call with investors, Karp seemed to celebrate Palantir’s involvement in the Trump administration’s mass deportation efforts. “We’re doin’ it!” he exclaimed. “And I’m sure you’re enjoying this as much as I am!” He continued, “We are crushing it. We are dedicating our company to the service of the West and the United States of America, and we’re super-proud of the role we play, especially in places we can’t talk about. […] Palantir is here to disrupt. And, when it’s necessary, to scare our enemies and, on occasion, kill them.”
• Palantir also has been involved with centralizing IRS data under Musk’s DOGE initiative, raising questions about the government’s handling of sensitive private information.
• Palantir’s AI tools also have been used by DHS to eliminate grants to eliminate under Trump’s anti-”DEI” and “gender ideology” executive orders.
• Karp has defended Palantir’s work assisting the Trump administration’s anti-immigration and deportation efforts, saying, “I care about two issues: I care about immigration and re-establishing the deterrent capacity of America without being a colonialist neocon view. On those two issues, this president has performed.” When asked if Trump is a fascist, Karp, who wrote his thesis on fascism, answered, “Of course not. I think that’s stupid, honestly.”
• Karp also was among the many Big Tech executives and billionaires who attended the White House dinner organized to strengthen US ties with Saudi Arabia, including the promise of a $1 trillion investment in the US and its corporations by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
• Palantir’s Maven Smart System is helping provide insights for targeting and target prioritization for the Trump administration’s war against Iran. The system had relied on Anthropic’s AI systems, which Palantir now must replace following Anthropic being designated a supply chain risk in retaliation for insisting on guardrails against its use for fully autonomous weapons and domestic surveillance. The US bombing of a girl’s school in Iran, which killed at least 175 people, has raised questions about military reliance on AI for targeting.
• Thiel, Lonsdale, and Karp all publicly advocated for war with Iran before the conflict began.

X (formerly Twitter) and others led by Elon Musk

“I love Donald Trump as much as a straight man can love another man”

-Billionaire CEO of Tesla, SpaceX and other corporations Elon Musk in a post on his X platform

• Musk, the billionaire CEO of a network of corporations including Tesla, Neuralink, and SpaceX – of which the social media platform X (formerly Twitter) and its OpenAI rival xAI are now subsidiaries – has had perhaps the closest, albeit occasionally volatile, relationship with Trump. Musk most famously and ostentatiously became a full-throated Trump supporter following the July 13, 2025 assassination attempt – and ultimately spent a whopping $290 million backing his candidacy and Republicans.
• Musk’s Trump-boosting activities in 2024 included transforming the X platform into a “pro-Trump echo chamber,” hosting Trump for a two-hour town hall and amplifying right-wing conspiracy theories.
• Musk launched his own Trump-backing super PAC, America PAC, into which he poured $250 million. Musk allies Antonio Gracias and Joe Lonsdale each gave $1 million to the super PAC, as did TikTok investor Douglas Leone.
• Musk spoke at a Trump rally in Pennsylvania and, after the election, met frequently with Trump, including joining cabinet meetings and appearing alongside the president at the Oval Office.
• Musk’s X Corp. made a $1 million inauguration donation and paid $10 million toward a future Trump presidential library to settle Trump’s lawsuit over the suspension of his account following the January 6 insurrection.
• Over the course of 2025, Musk poured another $73 million into pro-Trump and super PACs, including a $5 million gift to Trump’s MAGA Inc super PAC following the temporary falling out between Musk and Trump and $45 million into America PAC. JD Vance brokered the reconciliation.
• Trump tasked Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, a tech entrepreneur and former Republican presidential candidate, with staffing and operating the reckless “Department Of Government Efficiency” initiative, which would lead to illegal mass firings of federal workers, gut government services, and increase rather than reduce costs. Ramaswamy departed early, leaving Musk in control.
• To lead DOGE, Trump made Musk a special government employee, allowing him to remain CEO of multiple corporations and avoid complying with federal conflicts of interest law. Musk had conflicts of interest at more than 70% of the agencies DOGE targeted.
• Musk’s corporations faced numerous federal enforcement actions when Trump took office. Several have been dropped.
• Following Musk’s exit from DOGE, many who are close to the billionaire remained to oversee its efforts.
• Weeks after Musk’s $5 million MAGA Inc donation, xAI announced a $200 million contract with the Pentagon. Use of the company’s AI chatbot Grok has raised alarms within the government, with some within the General Services Administration (GSA) warning the system is overly sycophantic and susceptible to manipulation.
• Musk also was among the many Big Tech executives and billionaires who attended the White House dinner organized to strengthen US ties with Saudi Arabia, including the promise of a $1 trillion investment in the US and its corporations by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
• Musk appeared with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth during a visit to SpaceX’s Starbase launch site, who approvingly referenced DOGE.
• Musk has advocated forcefully for extreme voter identification legislation. He claimed that failure to pass the bill “would be the end of democracy in America.” He has repeatedly made the false claim that Democrats are engaged in a conspiracy to win elections by letting undocumented immigrants vote.
• Musk offered to pay the salaries of Transportation Security Administration agents during the partial government shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security that began in January over efforts to restrain ICE. Trump welcomed the offer.

 Conclusion

As the 2026 midterm elections approach, Big Tech executives are scrambling to ensure their profitable MAGA alliance with President Trump will continue – and threatening big spending to discipline candidates who might restrain their power.

And with the prospect of a possible shift from Republican to Democratic majorities in one or both chambers of Congress, Big Tech corporations are bracing for the change. Meta, Google, Apple, Amazon, and others that have gone out of their way to ingratiate themselves to Trump are similarly expected to face scrutiny.

A memo by lobbying firm Holland & Knight warned that subjects of potential oversight investigations could include “communications and activities between the Trump Administration and private companies, including financial contributions to the construction of President Trump’s White House ballroom, settlement funds earmarked for the Trump Presidential Library and awarding of federal contracts to companies with ties to the administration” as well as data centers, algorithmic pricing schemes, environmental rollbacks, and the federal government’s use of AI systems.

Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Calif.), who is expected to control the House Oversight Committee if Democrats win the majority, remarked to Politico, “How can we focus on taking on big corporate interests that might be hurting the American public? […] We can investigate larger corporations, organizations that are also harming consumers — large companies using data to manipulate pricing, foreign interests that are driving up the cost of housing, contracts through the Department of Defense that are going to friends and family of members of the administration.”

Holding Big Tech accountable for enabling authoritarianism, harming consumers and workers, leveraging unfair political and marketplace advantages, and engaging in misconduct should be a priority regardless of political partisanship. Americans oppose the cozy connections between the Trump administration and Big Tech by a two-to-one margin, while voters strongly favor tough regulations to protect the public from AI technology.

Big Tech might spend big money in an attempt to subvert democracy against what the public wants, but make no mistake – the people want their elected representatives to stand with them against corporate abuses. Strong spines and stronger convictions are essential for stopping the subversion of the public’s will. Because technology does not have the authority to determine America’s future – and neither do the handful of billionaires and corporations that control it. The American people do. Big Tech’s attempts to subvert the public interest must be resisted every step of the way.