AP Photo/John Loche
- Amazon plans to donate $1 million to Trump’s inauguration, the same amount as Meta, per reports.
- The moves show Big Tech’s effort to mend relations with Trump, who has been critical of the industry.
- Trump said Thursday he wanted to “get ideas” from Big Tech leaders coming to visit him in Mar-a-Lago.
First Meta, now Amazon — Jeff Bezos’ company will also reportedly donate $1 million to Donald Trump’s inauguration.
The Wall Street Journal reported Amazon would donate the same amount as Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta, the latest sign that Big Tech and the president-elect are reconciling.
Trump also told CNBC Thursday that Bezos would visit him “next week,” and The Information reported Thursday that Google CEO Sundar Pichai would also travel to meet him.
It comes after Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg visited Trump at the president-elect’s Mar-a-Lago resort for Thanksgiving Eve dinner last month.
″Mark Zuckerberg’s been over to see me, and I can tell you, Elon is another and Jeff Bezos is coming up next week, and I want to get ideas from them,” Trump told CNBC’s Jim Cramer on Thursday.
Spokespeople for Amazon and Trump did not respond to requests for comment.
Meta confirmed to the Journal Wednesday its $1 million donation to the president-elect’s inaugural fund. Amazon confirmed its donation to the Financial Times.
The meetings and donations point to a shift in the relationship between tech leaders and Trump, who had previously been critical of them. Trump has previously accused Zuckerberg and Bezos of bias against his administration, among other criticisms.
In previous years, Bezos and Trump have clashed. During his first campaign and term, Trump would take shots at Amazon, once stating that the company was doing “great damage to tax-paying retailers.”
Bezos has previously criticized Trump’s inflammatory rhetoric, including the president-elect’s call at the time to imprison Hilary Clinton.
As Trump took office in 2017, Amazon donated about $58,000 to Trump’s inauguration — much less than what other tech companies donated at the time, according to the Journal.
Zuckerberg has criticized Trump’s violent remarks on Facebook. In 2021, the social media platform took the extraordinary step of deplatforming Trump after he praised January 6 rioters.
Both tech leaders have appeared to warm up to Trump in recent months.
The Amazon tycoon said at The New York Times’ DealBook Summit last week that he’s “actually very optimistic” about a second Trump term, saying that Trump has likely “grown in the last eight years” and that he was encouraged by the president-elect’s focus on deregulation.
“He seems to have a lot of energy around reducing regulation. If I can help do that, I’m going to help him,” Bezos said.
Zuckerberg also appears to be mending his relationship with the president-elect, despite Trump threatening to throw the Meta CEO in prison as recently as July.
After the first assassination attempt against Trump, Zuckerberg called the president-elect a “badass” but stopped short of endorsing him during a Bloomberg interview.
On November 6, Zuckerberg was among the CEOs congratulating Trump’s election victory.
“Looking forward to working with you and your administration,” Zuckerberg wrote in a Threads post.
