Donald Trump was sworn in as president of the United States for the second time on Monday, and key business and tech leaders were there to watch it happen — and to try to get in his good graces.
It’s a shift from recent years when Big Tech leaders and Trump appeared more at odds.
Several of them even sat on the inaugural platform, getting better seats than some of Trump’s cabinet appointees.
Tesla’s Elon Musk, Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, Google’s Sundar Pichai, and Amazon’s Jeff Bezos were among those seated on the inaugural platform. Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, in contrast, was reported to have watched from an overflow room.
Here are the billionaires and CEOs who attended Trump’s inauguration.
Elon Musk, the Tesla and SpaceX CEO who spent hundreds of millions helping to elect Trump, attended the inauguration and spoke at an inaugural rally Monday.
Musk has been a frequent visitor to Trump’s Florida estate, Mar-a-Lago, since Trump was reelected.
Trump tapped Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy to lead a new Department of Government Efficiency, though Ramaswamy confirmed Monday that he was leaving DOGE.
Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, attended the inauguration ceremony and sat on the platform.
Later on Monday, Zuckerberg posted a photo of himself and Chan dressed for an inauguration event with the caption “Optimistic and celebrating” alongside an American-flag emoji.
Meta was one of the first major companies to donate $1 million to Trump’s inauguration fund and has started 2025 with a slew of changes that appear to be influenced by Trump’s politics.
Zuckerberg dined with Trump at Mar-a-Lago in November and was “very keen to play an active role” in the president’s tech policymaking, Meta’s then-global affairs chief, Nick Clegg, said at the time.
Trump was a vocal critic of Facebook in his first term and last year threatened to send Zuckerberg to prison if reelected.
While Zuckerberg didn’t endorse a candidate for president in 2024, he said Trump’s reaction to being shot at a rally in Pennsylvania in the summer was “badass.”
Amazon’s founder, Jeff Bezos, and his fiancée, Lauren Sánchez, met with Trump at Mar-a-Lago in December. Amazon also donated $1 million to Trump’s inaugural fund.
Bezos said at The New York Times’ DealBook Summit last month that he was “actually very optimistic” about another Trump term and would like to help Trump with “reducing regulation”
“What I’ve seen so far is he is calmer than he was the first time and more settled,” Bezos said. “You’ve probably grown in the last eight years. He has, too.”
Bezos didn’t always feel this way about Trump.
In 2016, he said Trump’s threats to lock up Hillary Clinton and refusal to say he’d accept the result of the presidential election that year if he didn’t win “erodes our democracy around the edges.”
Trump has also criticized Amazon and The Washington Post, which Bezos owns, frequently over the years.
In 2024, for the first time in decades, the Post didn’t endorse a presidential candidate. Bezos reportedly intervened to block an endorsement of Kamala Harris.
Bezos later defended the decision, writing in an op-ed that endorsements “create a perception of bias” and “do nothing to tip the scales of an election.”
Unlike some of his peers, Apple CEO Tim Cook made a $1 million donation to Trump’s inaugural fund from his own wallet rather than from his company.
Cook has credited the first Trump administration with helping Apple break into the retail market in India.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman also made a personal donation of $1 million to Trump’s inaugural fund.
Altman has said he agrees with some of Trump’s views around bureaucratic blockades.
“The thing I really deeply agree with the president on is, it is wild how difficult it has become to build things in the United States,” Altman told Bloomberg earlier this month.
He added: “Power plants, data centers, any of that kind of stuff. I understand how bureaucratic cruft builds up, but it’s not helpful to the country in general.”
Shou Zi Chew, TikTok’s CEO, was also spotted in the Capitol Rotunda.
Last week, the Supreme Court ruled against TikTok on its challenge against a divest-or-ban law. The platform briefly went dark for US users on Saturday night but resumed its services on Sunday after Trump said he’d delay the ban with an executive order.
On Friday, Chew thanked Trump “for his commitment to work with us to find a solution that keeps TikTok available in the United States.”
Google CEO Sundar Pichai was also in attendance Monday.
Google was among the companies that donated $1 million to Trump’s inaugural fund.
Rupert Murdoch, the patriarch of the Fox News empire, was also in attendance.
The French billionaire Bernard Arnault, who’s the CEO of the luxury conglomerate LVMH, which includes brands such as Louis Vuitton and Dior, attended the inauguration.
He was joined by his daughter, Delphine Arnault, who’s CEO of Dior, and his son Alexandre Arnault, who’s set to become the deputy CEO of LVMH’s wines and spirits division, Moët Hennessy, starting in February.
Silicon Valley’s growing alignment with the cultural MAGA-verse was also on display Monday.
In attendance at the inauguration was Dana White, the president and CEO of UFC, who was recently appointed to the board of Meta and is a close Trump ally.
White and Meta’s Zuckerberg, whose hobbies have included MMA fighting, have been spotted together multiple times over the years.
The podcaster Theo Von, one of the internet celebrities whom Trump sought to court young male voters, was at the inauguration, too, representing an ascendant realm of right-wing media.
Joe Rogan, who interviewed Trump on his podcast in late October, also attended.
Miriam Adelson, the widow of the casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, was also in attendance.
The Associated Press reported that the longtime GOP megadonor was cohosting a reception for Trump on Monday night alongside Zuckerberg; Tilman Fertitta, Trump’s pick for US ambassador to Italy; Todd Ricketts, the co-owner of the Chicago Cubs; and Ricketts’ wife, Sylvie Légère.
The Las Vegas casino magnate Phil Ruffin attended the inauguration with his wife, Oleksandra Nikolayenko.
Trump had served as Ruffin’s best man when he married Nikolayenko in 2008.
Mukesh Ambani, the chairman of the Indian conglomerate Reliance Industries, attended Trump’s inauguration along with his wife, Nita, a spokesperson for Ambani confirmed to Business Insider.
The couple also attended Trump’s pre-inauguration reception in Washington on Saturday.
At the Private Reception in Washington, Mrs. Nita and Mr. Mukesh Ambani extended their congratulations to President-Elect Mr. Donald Trump ahead of his inauguration.
With a shared optimism for deeper India-US relations, they wished him a transformative term of leadership, paving… pic.twitter.com/XXm2Sj74vX
Linda McMahon, Trump’s nominee for education secretary who’s the former CEO of World Wrestling Entertainment, was also present at Trump’s inauguration.
While not a billionaire in her own right, McMahon gave $15 million to Trump’s campaign and is married to Vincent McMahon, the former executive chairman of WWE-owned TKO Group Holdings, who’s valued at $3 billion.
She led the Small Business Administration from 2017 to 2019, during Trump’s first term in office.
Also in attendance was Scott Bessent, Trump’s pick for Treasury Secretary.
Bessent founded and runs the macro hedge fund Key Square Group and served as Trump’s top economic advisor during the campaign.
If he gets Senate confirmation, Bessent would be the highest-ranking LGBTQ+ official in American history, the Associated Press reported.
Former Gov. Doug Burgum of North Dakota was another attendee at Trump’s inauguration.
Burgum, Trump’s pick to lead the Department of Interior and be “energy czar,” cofounded Arthur Ventures, a venture-capital firm that invests in early-stage B2B software businesses and manages $1.1 billion.
Chris Wright, the founder and CEO of Liberty Energy, an oilfield-services firm with a $3.7 billion net value, was also present.
Trump has tapped Wright to lead the Department of Energy, but he’ll continue in his positions until the Senate confirms him, the company said.
Howard Lutnick, the CEO of the Wall Street investment bank Cantor Fitzgerald, was another attendee at Trump’s inauguration.
Lutnick, who’s been put forward as the next commerce secretary, has been the president and CEO of the financial-services firm since 1991.
In recent years, the billionaire banker has become a key advisor to Trump as well as a major fundraiser.
He is cochair of the Trump transition team.
Responses from the corporate world also poured in online.
Pichai, Cook, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, and former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg were among those congratulating Trump on X, formerly known as Twitter, on Monday.
Correction: January 20, 2025 — An earlier version of this story misstated Jeff Bezos’ current position at Amazon. He is the founder and executive chairman, not the CEO.
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