Invitations were sent to Silicon Valley leaders last week to meet with the president-elect. The meeting is notable because leaders in tech, for the most part, vocally disapproved of Trump’s campaign.
The tech industry and Trump administration could clash over some important issues like net neutrality and immigration.
Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, Apple CEO Tim Cook, Alphabet CEO Larry Page, Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, and Intel CEO Brian Krzanich plan to attend, according to sources with knowledge of the situation. Elon Musk, CEO of SpaceX and Tesla, will also attend.
Bezos and Trump have had a contentious relationship, which played out in headlines during the campaign. Trump took issue with Bezos’ 2013 purchase of the Washington Post, arguing that he did so to keep Amazon’s taxes low and to avoid antitrust scrutiny. The Post was one of the media outlets that Trump blacklisted for unfavorable coverage.
For his part, Bezos has taken issue with Trump’s rhetoric, saying it “erodes our democracy around the edges.
Eric Schmidt, Alphabet’s executive chairman, will also be attending. Schmidt offered support to Hillary Clinton’s campaign and was said to have interest in being its “head outside advisor,” according to hacked emails.
They’ll join Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins and Oracle co-CEO Safra Catz, who CNNMoney previously reported would be attending.
IBM CEO Ginni Rometty, who is part of Trump’s newly established policy forum, will also attend.
Invitations to meet with Trump were signed by Trump’s son-in-law and adviser Jared Kushner, chief of staff Reince Priebus, and billionaire tech investor Peter Thiel.
Thiel, who broke from many other people in tech in supporting Trump early, has been a link between Trump and Silicon Valley.
At least so far, a number of prominent tech players are noticeably absent from the list of confirmed attendees.
That includes Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, whose platform Trump used feverishly to build support throughout his campaign.
Silicon Valley pulled out the stops during the campaign to highlight why they believed Trump would be bad for innovation.
One open letter against Trump was signed by 145 tech leaders, including well-known names like Apple cofounder Steve Wozniak, Slack CEO Stewart Butterfield, IAC’s Barry Diller, Reddit’s Alexis Ohanian and Wikipedia’s Jimmy Wales.
LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman came out with a card game to slam Trump, and Sam Altman, who heads up elite Silicon Valley accelerator Y Combinator, compared Trump to Hitler.
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