Then & now: How Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, and other tech leaders are treating Trump differently this time around

• Donald Trump's second inauguration is on Monday.
• He's received a warm welcome from top CEOs in the tech industry.
• Some business leaders are reacting differently to a Trump presidency than they did eight years ago.

Business leaders are treating President-elect Donald Trump a lot differently than they did eight years ago when he first took the White House.

Trump will take the oath of office at his second inauguration on Monday, and several CEOs are reportedly attending.

Microsoft CEO Sundar Pichai and TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew are just two of the latest Big Tech executives planning to attend. Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, and Jeff Bezos are also reportedly attending.

Companies have also been making donations toward Trump's inauguration festivities. Google, for instance, is making a $1 million donation — roughly three times what the company donated to Trump's 2017 inauguration.

Meta, Microsoft, and Amazon are also making major donations to Trump's inauguration. Sam Altman is contributing $1 million of his own money to the fund.

It's not unusual for major companies and CEOs to donate to a presidential inauguration. Uber, Qualcomm, and Lockheed Martin were among the companies to make $1 million donations to President Joe Biden's inauguration celebrations in 2021, according to a Federal Elections Commission Filing.

Trump also attracted multiple million-dollar donations for his inauguration in 2017, when net donations reached about $107 million thanks to names like Sheldon Adelson and Charles Schwab. Major tech names didn't contribute, though, according to federal filings.

Trump's inauguration effort this year has raised $170 million so far — a record, according to the New York Times. This time, donations from tech companies and leaders are partly to thank.

How CEOs responded to Trump's first presidency

The level of support for Trump among tech leaders this year contrasts with 2016, when many prominent CEOs distanced themselves from Trump.

In the days after Trump won in November 2016, many CEOs did not mention Trump by name in their public statements.

"We are all blessed to have the ability to make the world better, and we have the responsibility to do it," Mark Zuckerberg posted on Facebook after the election that year. "Let's go work even harder."

Zuckerberg also skipped a December 2016 meeting with Trump and other tech CEOs soon after Trump was elected.

Apple CEO Tim Cook told employees at the time that the company's ranks included "supporters of each of the candidates."

"Regardless of which candidate each of us supported as individuals, the only way to move forward is to move forward together," he said, according to an email obtained at the time by TechCrunch.

Ahead of the December 2016 meeting that Trump held with tech leaders, there was "a wide spectrum of feeling in the Valley," Aaron Levie, the CEO of the cloud storage company Box, told The New York Times at the time, referring to Silicon Valley in California.

Some business leaders did congratulate Trump directly, though some of their comments were not glowing endorsements.

"Congratulations to @realDonaldTrump," Jeff Bezos wrote on Twitter. "I for one give him my most open mind and wish him great success in his service to the country."

Tech leaders show public support for Trump

When Trump won a second term in November, by contrast, Zuckerberg, Cook, and other CEOs who had avoided saying Trump's name or involving themselves in the inauguration or administration were direct in congratulating him.

Elon Musk, who became an economic advisor to Trump during his first term, ended up parting ways with the president in 2017 after Trump withdrew the US from the Paris Agreement on the climate crisis.

Yet Musk threw his support behind Trump this time round, and in November, Trump named the Tesla CEO and Vivek Ramaswamy, a politician and entrepreneur who has worked in the biotech industry, to run the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).

Musk has been spending lots of time with Trump during his preparations to take office. He's also referred to himself as the "first buddy."

While seemingly not as closely involved in the transition, other prominent tech figures have also sounded hopeful when speaking about Trump's return to the White House.

For instance, Zuckerberg told podcaster Joe Rogan earlier this month that he thinks Trump will help US businesses.

"One of the things that I'm optimistic about with President Trump is I think he just wants America to win," he said during the podcast.

At The New York Times' DealBook Summit in December, Bezos said he wanted to help Trump reduce government regulations.

"I am very optimistic this time around," Bezos said of Trump's second term.

Trump is also changing his tune

There are some indications from Trump himself that his relationships with many CEOs are on the mend.

In 2021, he called Zuckerberg a "criminal" after he and his wife, Priscilla Chan, donated more than $400 million to organizations supporting election infrastructure in 2020.

Last September, Trump also published a coffee table book called "Save America" in which he gave an ominous warning to Zuckerberg.

"We are watching him closely, and if he does anything illegal this time he will spend the rest of his life in prison — as will others who cheat in the 2024 Presidential Election," Trump wrote in the caption of one of the images of him and Zuckerberg in the White House.

Instead of sitting in prison, though, Zuckerberg will likely have a front-row seat at Trump's inauguration events.

On Tuesday, the Washington Post reported that Zuckerberg is one of the hosts for a reception for Trump that will be held before the Inauguration Ball, which will take place Monday evening.

Trump has also seemingly changed his tune on Zuck's company, Meta.

In 2017, Trump also called Meta, then known as Facebook, "anti-Trump" in a post on X.

Earlier this month, Trump said the company had "come a long way" after Meta said it would end fact-checking on Facebook.

Trump also took aim at Bezos during his first term, calling him "Jeff Bozo" in a 2019 post on X, criticizing the Bezos-owned Washington Post, and saying that Amazon didn't compensate the Post Office adequately for shipping so many of its packages.

This December, though, the former Amazon CEO was on terms good enough for Trump to host Bezos and his fiancée, Lauren Sánchez, at his Mar-A-Largo estate for dinner.

Other business leaders, including Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Altman, and Zuckerberg, also visited Mar-A-Largo after Trump's win in 2024, underscoring a broader shift in the relationship between Trump and the tech world.

"In this term, everybody wants to be my friend," Trump said in December of all the tech CEOs trying to get an audience with him.

Trump's transition team and representatives for Altman, Bezos, Cook, Musk, Pichai, and Zuckerberg did not respond to requests for comment from Business Insider.