Sam Altman has joined the growing list of billionaires genuflecting before Donald Trump.
Fox Business reported Friday that the tech founder will personally be donating $1 million to the presidential inaugural committee. “President Trump will lead our country into the age of AI, and I am eager to support his efforts to ensure America stays ahead,” Altman said in a statement.
We’ll have to see if the donation smooths over Altman’s rocky relationship with fellow OpenAI co-founder and President-elect Trump’s self-styled “first buddy,” Elon Musk.
Musk left OpenAI in 2018, reportedly after his fellow founders shot down a proposal to let him run the company himself. Musk has since taken shots at Altman (and launched his own AI company), but their feud has heated up in recent months. Musk sued OpenAI in March, alleging it violated its nonprofit principles, and his criticisms of Altman have taken on a distinctly Trumpish flavor: The world’s richest man and unofficial Trump co-president recently dubbed Altman “Swindly Sam.”
But with a second Trump administration on the horizon, plutocrats’ past beefs with Trumpworld are magically disappearing. The announcement of Altman’s $1 million donation to the upcoming inauguration follows reports of Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos doing the same, despite their past run-ins with Trump.
Zuckerberg, who has called Trump “badass” even as Trump threatened him with imprisonment for supposed election interference as the owner of Facebook, will donate to the inauguration fund through Meta. Jeff Bezos—who has long been lampooned by Trump as the owner of The Washington Post—tanked the Post’s 2024 endorsement of Kamala Harris at the last minute in November. He will be donating his million via Amazon.
