- Donald Trump was sworn in as the 47th president of the United States on Monday.
- Big names in business and tech attended the inauguration and other weekend celebrations.
- Here are the billionaires and CEOs who attended Trump’s inaugural ceremony Monday.
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 and other conservatives 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. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, for example, reportedly watched from the overflow room.
Here are the billionaires and CEOs who attended Trump’s inauguration.
Elon Musk, Tesla, SpaceX, and X
Christopher Furlong/Getty Images
Elon Musk, the Tesla and SpaceX CEO who spent hundreds of millions of dollars to elect Trump, attended the inauguration and spoke at an inaugural rally Monday.
Musk has frequently been to Trump’s Florida estate, Mar-a-Lago, in the weeks since Trump was elected.
Trump tapped Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy to lead a new Department of Government Efficiency, though Ramaswamy confirmed Monday he’s leaving DOGE.
Mark Zuckerberg, Meta
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Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, attended the inauguration an sat on the platform.
Later on Monday, he posted a photo on Instagram 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 firms to donate $1 million to Trump’s inauguration fund, and the company has started 2025 with a slew of changes that appear to be influenced by Trump’s politics.
CEO Mark Zuckerberg dined with Trump at Mar-a-Lago in November and is “very keen to play an active role” in the president’s tech policymaking, according to Meta’s then-global affairs chief, Nick Clegg.
Though Zuck didn’t endorse a candidate for president, he said Trump’s reaction to being shot at a Pennsylvania rally this summer was “badass.”
Trump was a vocal critic of Facebook in his first term and earlier this year threatened to jail Zuckerberg if re-elected.
Sundar Pichai, Google
SAUL LOEB / POOL / AFP
Google CEO Sundar Pichai was also in attendance Monday.
Google was among the companies that donated $1 million to Trump’s inaugural fund.
Jeff Bezos, Amazon
Kenny Holston/The New York Times via AP
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and his fiancée, Lauren Sanchez, reportedly met with Trump at Mar-a-Lago in December for dinner, joined by Elon Musk. Amazon also donated $1 million to Trump’s inaugural fund.
Bezos is “actually very optimistic” about another Trump term and would like to help him with “reducing regulation,” he said at The New York Times’ DealBook Summit last month.
“What I’ve seen so far is he is calmer than he was the first time and more settled,” he 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 wish to lock up Hillary Clinton or refuse to accept a loss in the presidential election that year “erodes our democracy around the edges.”
Trump has criticized Amazon and The Washington Post, which Bezos owns, frequently over the years.
In 2024, for the first time in decades, The Washington Post didn’t publish an endorsement of a presidential candidate. Bezos reportedly intervened to block an endorsement of Kamala Harris that had already been drafted.
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.”
Tim Cook, Apple
SHAWN THEW / POOL / AFP
Unlike some of his peers, Apple CEO Tim Cook — better known to Trump as “Tim Apple” — made a $1 million donation to Trump’s inaugural fund from his own wallet, not his company’s.
Cook has credited the first Trump administration with helping Apple break into the retail market in India.
Sam Altman, OpenAI
ALEXANDER DRAGO / POOL / AFP
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman also made a personal donation of $1 million to Trump’s inaugural fund.
Altman 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. “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
Shawn THEW / POOL / AFP
In the wake of Trump’s efforts to reverse the recent ban on TikTok, Shou Zi Chew, the app’s CEO, was also spotted in the Capitol Rotunda.
TikTok was briefly down in the US this weekend after the Supreme Court upheld a ban on it, but the app came back online after a few hours.
Chew said in a subsequent TikTok, “I want to thank President Trump for his commitment to work with us to find a solution that keeps TikTok available in the United States.”
Rupert Murdoch, NewsCorp
Melina Mara/The Washington Post via Getty Images
Rupert Murdoch, patriarch of the Fox News empire, was also present Monday.
Bernard Arnault, LVMH
Pool/Getty Images
French billionaire Bernard Arnault, the CEO of luxury conglomerate LVMH, which includes brands like Louis Vuitton and Dior, attended the inauguration.
He was joined by daughter Delphine Arnault, who is CEO of Dior, and son Alexandre Arnault, who will become deputy CEO of LVMH’s wines and spirits division, Moët Hennessy, starting in February.
Dana White, UFC
Shawn Thew-Pool/Getty Images
Silicon Valley’s growing alignment with the cultural MAGA-verse was on display Monday.
In attendance at the inauguration was Dana White, president and CEO of UFC, who was recently appointed to the board of Meta and is a Trump ally.
White and Meta’s Zuckerberg, whose hobbies include MMA fighting, have been spotted together multiple times over the years.
Podcaster Theo Von, one of the internet celebrities Trump used 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 popular podcast in late October and Zuckerberg earlier this month, also attended from the Rotunda.
Miriam Adelson, Las Vegas Sands
Saul Loeb-Pool/Getty Images
Adelson, the widow of casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, was also in attendance.
According to the Associated Press, the longtime GOP megadonor co-hosted a reception for Trump on Monday night alongside Zuckerberg; Tilman Fertitta, Trump’s pick for US ambassador to Italy; Todd Ricketts, co-owner of the Chicago Cubs; and Ricketts’ wife, Sylvie Légère.
Phil Ruffin, Circus Circus Hotel and Casino
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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.
Outside of Washington DC, responses from the corporate world also poured in online, too.
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.
