Tech, Media and Finance Moguls Who Attended Anant Ambani’s Pre-Wedding Festivities
Anant Amabani, the youngest son of Asia’s richest person, Mukesh Ambani, is getting married, and his father’s powerful friends flew in from all over the world this past weekend at attend a lavish pre-wedding party in India. According to the Bloomberg Billionaire Index, Mukesh Ambani, the founder and chairman of India’s Reliance Industries, is worth $113 billion, certainly enough to afford a party where 1,200 of the family’s closest friends gathered to watch Rihanna perform an entire 19-song setlist.
Among the guests of the three-day party, which began on Friday (Mar. 1), were Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan, according to their social media posts. According to a guest list leaked before the event, Alphabet (GOOGL) and Google (GOOGL) CEO Sundar Pichai, Disney CEO Bob Iger and BlackRock CEO Larry Fink were also invited.
Here are some standouts from the pre-wedding party’s guests and why they matter to the Ambani family:
Rihanna
Technically, Rihanna was there as a performer, but there are clips of her enjoying herself at the party after her concert. Rihanna and Mukesh Ambani’s business may have just been entertainment-related last weekend, but the two could have a shared interest in cosmetics too.
Mukesh Ambani partnered with Sephora last fall to operate its stores in India and expand its presence in the country. Rihanna’s cosmetics brand Fenty Beauty, which includes makeup and skincare, is sold through Sephora among other retailers like Ulta Beauty. Sephora opened its first store in India in 2012 and , according to its website, it currently doesn’t carry Fenty Beauty.
Bill Gates
Gates’s most recent relationship to Mukesh Ambani is through philanthropic causes. The Gates Foundation has a partnership with Ambani’s Reliance for women’s economic empowerment in India’s state of Madhya Pradesh.
Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan
The Meta (META) founder and his wife, philanthropist Chan, kept followers updated on each of their outfits during the festivities via Chan’s Instagram account. Meta invested $5.7 billion in Reliance’s tech branch Jio Platforms in 2020, which launched publicly in 2019.
Bob Iger
Iger was reportedly going to attend the Ambani bash last weekend. This could double as a celebration for Disney’s own deal with Reliance, which came to fruition last week. The two companies inked a joint venture that combined their streaming and TV businesses in India.
Sundar Pichai
Pichai has previously attended Ambani family parties, and was photographed five years ago at Mukesh Ambani’s older son Akash’s wedding. Reliance and Google’s ongoing relationship includes an $4.5 billion investment from Google for Jio Platforms back in 2020.
Other media, tech and finance power players invited to the party include:
- Stephen Schwarzman, chairman of Blackstone
- Ted Pick, Morgan Stanley CEO
- Ajit Jain, vice chairman of Berkshire Hathaway
- James Murdoch, former CEO of 21st Century Fox
- Brian Thomas Moynihan, chairman of Bank of America
- Yasir Al Rumayyan, chairman of Saudi Aramco
- Shantanu Narayen, CEO of Adobe