AP Photo/John Loche
Jeff Bezos' Amazon plans to donate $1 million to Donald Trump's inauguration, following Wednesday's news that Mark Zuckerberg's Meta made the same contribution, The Wall Street Journal reported.
Meta confirmed to the Journal Wednesday that the company donated $1 million to the president-elect's inaugural fund.
The donations would mark a shift in the relationship between tech leaders and Trump, who had previously been critical of Big Tech bosses. Trump has previously accused Zuckerberg and Bezos of bias against his administration, among other criticisms.
Last month, the Meta CEO paid a visit to Trump at the president-elect's Mar-a-Lago resort for Thanksgiving Eve dinner. Google CEO Sundar Pichai also plans to meet with Trump, The Information reported.
″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 a request for comment.
In previous years, Bezos and Trump have frequently feuded with each other. 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 on the other hand 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.
Similarly, Zuckerberg has criticized Trump's violent remarks on Facebook. In 2021, the social media platform took the extraordinary step of deplatforming the president after Trump praised Jan. 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 the Bloomberg interview.
On November 6, Zuckerberg joined the chorus of CEOs congratulating Trump's decisive election victory.
"Looking forward to working with you and your administration," Zuckerberg wrote in a Threads post.
