Google has donated $1 million to President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration fund, the company confirmed to POLITICO Thursday, matching contributions from Meta, Amazon, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Apple CEO Tim Cook.
Tech companies have clamored to win Trump over in the months since his election, with Google’s CEO Sundar Pichai among a line of executives who have flocked to Mar-a-Lago for meetings with the incoming president
“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, said in a statement. The company made its donation Monday.
Earlier this week, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced his company would roll back efforts to moderate content on Facebook and Instagram — a move widely interpreted as an effort to placate Trump, who has repeatedly accused the company of censorship and anti-conservative bias.
Senate Commerce Chair Ted Cruz (R-Texas) told POLITICO this week Republicans would take aim at the content moderation policies of Google and YouTube, both owned by Alphabet.
That is just one of many legal and policy battles facing the search giant in the Trump administration, most notably two high-profile antitrust lawsuits brought by the Justice Department. Google’s business interests are also tied up in debates over artificial intelligence, immigration and taxes — all issues on the Trump administration’s agenda.
Google donated $285,000 to the 2016 and 2020 inaugurations, spokesperson José Castañeda said. The company has previously promoted the inauguration on its homepage and YouTube.
