US President Donald Trump smiles at the crowd at the National Guard Association of the United States' 146th Annual Convention & Exhibition at the Huntington Place Convention Center on August 26, 2024 in Detroit, Michigan.
Emily Elconin | Getty Images News | Getty Images
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos have a special history with the President-elect Donald Trump. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is in a heated legal battle Elon Muskwho has become one of Trump's biggest supporters and is poised to play a major role in his second administration.
All of that helps explain this week's announcements about donations to Trump's campaign fund.
“President Trump will lead our country into the age of AI, and I want to support his efforts to ensure America stays ahead,” Altman said in a statement Friday. Altman said he expects made a personal donation of $1 million to the fund, the company confirmed.
Meta Donated $1 million to the foundation, the company confirmed to CNBC, weeks after Zuckerberg dined with Trump privately at his Mar-a-Lago resort. Amazon also plans to donate $1 million, according to a report from The Wall Street Journal.
Trump has been a vocal critic of tech companies, and he is mark earlier this month that he will not shy away from antitrust enforcement. Incoming president-elect Gail Slater, who advised Trump on technology policy in his first term, was named to head the Justice Department's antitrust arm.
“Big Tech has run amok for years, stifling competition in our most innovative sector and, as we all know, using its market power to take away the rights of so many Americans , plus Little Tech's rights!” Trump wrote in a Dec. 4 post on Social reality citing Slater's nomination. “I was proud to fight against these abuses in my first term, and our Justice Department trust team will continue that work under Gail's leadership.
Some of Trump's most hostile words in the past have been aimed at Amazon and Meta.
In his first term, Trump repeatedly attacked Bezos and his companies, Amazon and The Washington Post, accusing them of tax evasion or publishing “fake news,” among other things. Trump also pointing the finger again and again at Amazon for using the US Postal Service to deliver packages to customers, saying the company contributed to the post office's budget problems.
They were animated on both sides. In 2019, Amazon blame Trump's “backdoor attacks” against the company for losing a multi-million dollar Department of Defense contract, then known as JEDI. And before the 2016 election, Bezos criticized Trump's behavior, saying it is “eroding our democracy.” After the then-Republican candidate accused Bezos of using the Post as a “tax shelter,” Bezos, who also owns the space company Blue Origin, said in a tweet that Trump's offer was sent to space on one of his rockets.
Blue Origin will compete for government contracts with Musk's SpaceX.
At the New York Times DealBook conference on December 4, Bezos he said he expects a friendlier regulatory environment in the incoming administration.
“I'm very optimistic this time,” Bezos said said on stage. “He seems to have a lot of energy about reducing regulation. If I can help do that, I'm going to help.”
Trump has referred to Bezos as “Jeff Bozo.” His favorite nickname for the Meta Chief is “Zuckerschmuck.”
After Trump's loss in the 2020 election, he sued Facebook, Twitter and Googleas well as their CEOs in a class action lawsuit. The three companies promoted Trump accounts from platforms after the January 6, 2021, riots at the Capitol.
Trump has long accused Facebook of silencing conservative voices. In March, it was called the platform “the enemy of the people along with much of the media,” in an interview on CNBC's “Squawk Box.”
Now that Trump is going back to the White House and has been comfortable with it musk, the rest of the tech sector seems eager to curry favor. Apple CEO Tim Cook, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, Google CEO Sundar Pichai and all others publicly congratulated Trump after his victory in November.
Microsoft declined to comment on whether it is adding to the setup. Representatives from Apple and Google did not immediately respond to CNBC's requests for comment.
For OpenAI and Altman, the concerns are slightly different. Altman and Musk were co-founders of OpenAI, which was initially a non-profit. The two have since publicly parted ways, with Altman remaining CEO of OpenAI and Musk starting a rival artificial intelligence company called xAI.
In March, Musk sue OpenAI – and co-founders Altman and Greg Brockman – allege breach of contract and fiduciary duty. He said that the project was transformed into a for-profit organization that is largely controlled by the main shareholder Microsoft, and which claims to prevent the structural change.
Open AI hit back Friday, applying blog post titled “Elon Musk wanted OpenAI for profit,” which in 2017 “not only wanted, but created, for profit” to be the company's proposed new structure .
Altman's concern is that Musk spent more than $250 million to promote Trump's campaign, and is now set to help lead the “Department of Government Efficiency.” In that role, Musk could influence how AI is managed in ways that favor his businesses.
On December 5, Trump name venture capitalist and podcaster David Sacks, a friend of Musk's, get together Trump administration as the “White House AI & Crypto Czar.”
Watch: The Trump Cabinet will have more billionaires than any in history
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