According to a person engaged in the event’s organizing, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Mark Zuckerberg will be present at President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration on Monday.
Together with other significant attendees, such as elected leaders and Trump’s Cabinet nominees, they will occupy a prominent position on the platform during the event.
Musk said that he was honored to have such a prominent position at the inauguration in a post on his social media platform, X.
Over the past year, all three of the tech giants have tried to gain favor with Trump, with Musk contributing over a quarter of a billion dollars in campaign contributions to help elect Trump. Since supporting Trump for president in July, the CEO of SpaceX and Tesla as well as the co-lead of DOGEMusk, a new Trump government advisory organization, has been by his side on numerous occasions.
This month, Zuckerberg, the CEO of Meta, reorganized his content moderation guidelines and lobbying team to conform to the new Republican administration. Meta also contributed $1 million to the inaugural fund for Trump.
According to two people with knowledge of the event who were not given permission to talk publicly, Zuckerberg and Republican megadonor Miriam Adelson are co-hosting a black-tie luncheon on Monday to commemorate the inauguration. Puck News was the first to report on the incident.
Amazon’s founder and executive chair, Jeff Bezos, overruled opinion workers who wanted to support Vice President Kamala Harris in the presidential election last autumn when he declared that his publication, The Washington Post, would not support the candidate. Moreover, Amazon gave $1 million to Trump’s inaugural fund.
Based on their fortunes from the tech boom of the last two decades, the three men rank among the richest persons in the world. According to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, Musk is ranked first, Bezos is ranked second, and Zuckerberg is ranked third.
As of Monday, their combined net worth was $885 billion, according to Bloomberg.
Representatives of Musk, Bezos, and Zuckerberg have been contacted by NBC News regarding their presence. A Meta spokesman opted not to comment. Requests for comment were not immediately answered by the others.
Federal records show that all three men have backed both Republicans and Democrats over the years.
Because of difficulties unique to their companies as well as possible changes in trade and tax laws, the tech titans have a lot riding on Trump’s second term.
The Federal Trade Commission has accused Meta of breaking the law to keep a monopoly on personal social networks, which might lead to an antitrust trial as early as April. Amazon’s cloud computing division, which was a point of contention with Trump during his first administration, makes it a significant federal contractor. Through its internet service company, Starlink, and rocket launches, SpaceX is a significant federal contractor.
In the tech sector, Musk, Zuckerberg, and Bezos frequently compete with one another for influence on topics like media, artificial intelligence, and space exploration.
With his space company Blue Origin, Bezos is attempting to challenge Musk’s hegemony in rocket launches, however Blue Origin canceled its first attempt on Monday.
Longtime adversaries in AI research, Zuckerberg and Musk are investing billions of dollars in new AI models. When Musk acquired X, which was then Twitter, in 2022, he also began to compete with Zuckerberg on social media.
Through their rival advertising and retail companies, Amazon and Meta, Bezos and Zuckerberg engage in competition.