Why Amazon, Facebook, Ford spend a lot

CEOs and their companies are pledging to donate millions of dollars to the president-elect Donald Trumpof the inaugural committee, as they try to attract his good side and break through before he takes office.

Some of planned donations allegedly include $1 million each Jeff Bezos‘ Amazondirector of OpenAI Sam Altman and parent company Facebook Targetheaded by Mark Zuckerberg. The rest includes $2 million from Robinhood Markets and a million dollars each from both Uber and its CEO, Dara Khosrowshahi.

Ford is allegedly matching his own $1 million donation with the fleet.

Hedge fund manager Ken Griffin also said he plans to give $1 million to the tax-exempt inaugural committee, Bloomberg reported. Other donations from the head of finance are alleged in works.

Emboldened by a decisive election victory, Trump has promised to overhaul US economic policy in a way that could greatly benefit a few favored industries, such as fossil fuels.

At the same time, he telegraphed the value, both personal and political, he places on personal meetings and public praise from CEOs of the world’s biggest companies.

“EVERYONE WANTS TO BE MY FRIEND!!!” Trump wrote in a post on Thursday Social trutha self-hosted social media app technology company.

Many of those CEOs have already gone to or plan to travel to Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s Palm Beach, Florida, resort and de facto transition headquarters, as they seek to gain influence and access to the new administration.

To that end, Trump’s inaugural committee presents a “unique opportunity,” Brendan Glavin, director of research at OpenSecrets, a nonprofit that looks at money in politics, said in an interview.

Inaugural committees, appointed by presidents-elect, plan and finance much of the pomp and circumstance that traditionally surrounds the transition of power from one administration to another.

While the money ultimately benefits a recent political candidate, it doesn’t have the same connotations as a donation to, say, a super PAC, which can fund partisan political activities that risk stirring controversy.

And unlike a direct contribution to a candidate’s campaign, there are no limits on how much an individual — or corporation or labor group — can give to an inaugural committee.

Moreover, since Trump has already won the election, the inaugural contribution carries no risk for a high-profile executive to support a losing candidate.

“This is a really great opportunity for them to ingratiate themselves with the new administration,” Glavin said.

While it’s nothing new for corporations and power brokers to throw big money at inaugural committees, experts told CNBC that the Trump factor is changing the calculus.

Now everything is intensified, said Glavin. “None of these people, they don’t want to be Trump’s punching bag for four years.”

Trump’s inaugural committee and his transition team did not respond to requests for comment.

Trump’s 2017 inaugural committee earned about $107 million, by far the most of any in US history. The previous record was set in 2009 during the first inauguration Barack Obamawhose committee raised $53 million.

Trump’s second inauguration is on track to break that record, with pledged contributions already surpassing the $150 million fundraising goal, ABC News reported.

President Joe BidenThe inaugural committee, by comparison, raised almost 62 million dollars.

“One of the oldest adages in Washington is that if you’re not at the table, you’re on the menu, and the price of a seat at the table keeps going up,” said Michael Beckel, director of research at Issue One, a political reform advocacy group.

The funding boost for Trump’s second inaugural committee comes in part from tech giants, many of which largely shied away from supporting his first inauguration.

Aside from GoDaddy.com founder Robert Parsons, who gave $1 million, few other leaders in Big Tech donated Trump Committee 2017.

Trump once openly clashed with some of them, including Zuckerberg and Bezoswho also owns The Washington Post, a frequent target of the president-elect’s ire.

Not so this time. As Trump promises to roll back reams of federal regulations, but also continues to accuse Big Tech of stifling competition, industry leaders may find themselves straining their relationship with the White House more than ever before.

“I’m actually very optimistic,” Bezos said of Trump’s second presidency in an interview Dec. 4 at The New York Times’ DealBook conference. “I’m very hopeful. He seems to have a lot of energy around reducing regulations. And my point of view, if I can help him with that, I’ll help him. Because we have too much regulation in this country.”

The comments followed a scandal in the Washington Post in October, when the paper reported it Bezos made up his mind not to announce his editorial support for the vice president Kamala Harris over Trump. Bezos in an op-ed he defended the paper’s decision to no longer support presidential candidates, but the reversal prompted an exodus of subscribers and forced many employees to resign in protest.

Nowhere is Trump’s newfound friendship with the tech world more evident than in his blossoming relationship with Tesla and the SpaceX CEO Elon Muskwho spent more than $250 million helping to elect Trump.

Musk, the world’s richest person, appeared frequently with Trump before and after his election victory, and was reportedly involved in all aspects of Trump’s transition planning. He and businessman Vivek Ramaswamy were chosen to lead an advisory group tasked with cutting government spending.

This could put OpenAI’s Altman, who is currently entangled ua lawsuit due to breach of contract put Musk in an awkward position.

Along with his inaugural $1 million donation, Altman praised Trump earlier this month. “President Trump will lead our country into the age of artificial intelligence, and I look forward to supporting his efforts to ensure America stays ahead,” he said.

Craig Holman, a government affairs lobbyist for the progressive nonprofit Public Citizen, told CNBC that the numbers “have a lot of fear that Donald Trump might retaliate against them.”

“So they’re throwing money” at his feet “to curry favor,” Holman said.

Four days after the presidential election, Trump announced the formation of the “Trump Vance Inaugural Committee, Inc.,” a 501(c)(4) nonprofit organization. It is co-chaired by real estate investor Steve Witkoff and a former Republican senator. Kelly Loeffler of Georgia, who is also Trump’s pick to lead the Small Business Administration.

Reince Priebus, who was one of Trump’s White House chiefs of staff during his first term, said in X post that he was elected to serve as chairman of the finance committee.

Priebus also shared a screenshot of the invitation that listed the names of the other finance chairs. Among them is Miriam Adelson, the Republican megadonor who spent 100 million dollars this year on a pro-Trump super PAC and a billionaire Trump donor Diane Hendricks.

Inauguration committees are required to publicly release the names of donors who give $200 or more, but those reports are not due until 90 days after the inauguration ceremony.

If the committee has a surplus after all the festivities, figuring out how much is left can be a challenge.

Trump’s 2017 inauguration was a smaller affair than Obama’s in 2009, even though Trump raised more than twice as much money as Obama for his inauguration. As a result, Trump’s committee was expected to be left with tens of millions of dollars after paying for the balls and hotels.

But years after the fact, it was unclear what happened on a large part of that money.

Federal filings show that about a quarter of all funds collected, $26 million, were paid a newly created company led by First Lady Melania Trump’s advisor.

“We’re looking at the history of inauguration funding, and it’s clearly coming from very large donors, wealthy special interests and corporations, almost all of whom have outstanding business before the federal government,” Public Citizen’s Holman said.

He added: “This is a real cesspool of buying services.”