Google and Microsoft are each donating $1 million to President-elect Donald Trump’s inaugural fund – joining a slew of tech companies bankrolling the celebrations as they seek to garner support from the incoming administration.
Google and Microsoft confirmed the donations with The Post.
“Google is pleased to support the 2025 inauguration, with a livestream on YouTube and a direct link on our homepage. We’re also donating to the inaugural committee,” Karan Bhatia, Google’s global head of government affairs and public policy, told The Post.
Google has donated to past inaugural funds, and its promotion of the inauguration’s livestream falls in line with past years — but its $1 million donation is more than triple the $285,000 given to Trump’s inaugural fund in 2017, according to Federal Election Commission filings reviewed by Newsweek.
Microsoft has also contributed to past inaugural funds – giving $500,000 to both President Joe Biden’s inauguration in 2021 and Trump’s first in 2017.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman – who is currently embroiled in a legal battle with Tesla CEO Elon Musk, Trump’s close ally and major campaign donor – announced a $1 million donation to the inaugural fund late last year, as did Meta. Amazon and Apple CEO Tim Cook have also reportedly contributed to the fund.
Unlike a presidential campaign, there are no limits to how much an individual can give to an inaugural fund, which finances the opening ceremonies, galas and events.
Major tech firms have been cozying up to the president-elect as his second term nears as they fear his past comments indicating he would not rule out antitrust enforcement.
It’s of particular concern for Google, whose search engine was ruled an illegal monopoly in August 2024. A verdict for a second antitrust case against Google’s advertising business has not yet been announced.
“Big Tech has run wild for years, stifling competition in our most innovative sector and, as we all know, using its market power to crack down on the rights of so many Americans, as well as those of Little Tech!” Trump wrote in a post on his platform Truth Social in December.
Google CEO Sundar Pichai congratulated Trump on his “decisive victory” in a post on X and met with the president-elect after the election – another sign the tech leader is trying to curry favor with the next administration.
Earlier this week, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that Meta is ending its fact-checking and content moderation policies – a win for Trump and Musk, who have vehemently opposed free speech restrictions on social media platforms.
Zuckerberg mentioned Trump in his announcement, saying he wants to work with the president-elect to prevent censorship and calling out “legacy media” for writing about misinformation after Trump’s first election win. The tech tycoon also recently dined with Trump the day before Thanksgiving.
It’s a sharp reversal for Meta, which banned Trump’s Facebook account after the Jan. 6 attacks on the Capitol. Zuckerberg has spoken out against Trump multiple times over the years – condemning his rhetoric toward the Black Lives Matter movement and expressing his concerns over Trump’s 2017 immigration policies.
Meta did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Tensions heated up this past summer, when Trump threatened Zuckerberg with jail time in his book after he and his wife donated hundreds of millions of dollars to support election infrastructure in 2020.
During a press conference on Tuesday, Trump was asked whether he believed Zuckerberg was “directly responding to the threats that you have made to him in the past.” He responded: “Probably.”
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