Key points
- Top tech leaders to attend Trump’s oath-taking ceremony
- Head of TikTok will attend event
- Oath-taking ceremony to be held indoors
ISLAMABAD: As US President-elect Donald Trump prepares to take the oath of office on Monday, his inauguration is set to draw not only political and business leaders but also some of the country’s most prominent technology personalities.
The tech industry’s emerging ties with the president-elect will be on full display Monday, with people like Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Tesla CEO Elon Musk, Google CEO Sundar Pichai, and others expected to be seated together nearby, according to Western media reports.
AFP reported that the Republican has invited a number of tech titans to the platform as VIPs. They will sit alongside other prominent — albeit more standard — guests such as his cabinet nominees.
The head of TikTok will also attend the ceremony, according to US media.
The tech leaders were initially supposed to sit on the dais — a position of honour where Trump’s family members, former presidents, and other high-profile guests would sit.
The Hill newspaper reported that other tech leaders, including Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, OpenAI co-founder and CEO Sam Altman, and Apple CEO Tim Cook, will likely attend the event.
However, some section of western media reported that the seating arrangement is now unclear following the ceremony was shifted indoors to the Capitol rotunda due to cold weather.
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos
According to Forbes, Jeff Bezos founded e-commerce giant Amazon in 1994 out of his Seattle garage. Bezos stepped down as CEO to become executive chairman in 2021. He owns a bit less than 10 per cent of the company.
He and his wife MacKenzie divorced in 2019 after 25 years of marriage and he transferred a quarter of his then-16 per cent Amazon stake to her. In 2020, Bezos committed to donate $10 billion to climate causes by 2030 through his Bezos Earth Fund; he has granted $2 billion so far. He owns The Washington Post and Blue Origin, an aerospace company developing rockets; he briefly flew to space in one in July 2021.
OpenAI co-founder and CEO Sam Altman
According to Forbes, Sam Altman is the CEO of OpenAI and a prolific venture investor. In 2005, he dropped out of Stanford to found social mapping company Loopt, which sold in 2012 for $43 million; he used proceeds to seed his own venture fund.
Around that time, Altman became a partner at startup accelerator Y Combinator, then served as YC’s president from 2014 to 2019. That year, Altman left YC to become CEO of OpenAI, now worth some $80 billion, although he was briefly fired and rehired in 2023. He has no equity in OpenAI, and instead owes his wealth to his investments, including stakes in Stripe, Reddit and nuclear fusion firm Helion.
Apple CEO Tim Cook
According to Forbes, Tim Cook is the CEO of Apple, one of the world’s most valuable companies. Cook, who became chief executive in 2011, had previously served as Apple’s chief operating officer under Steve Jobs.
Cook joined Apple in 1998, having worked briefly at PC-maker Compaq and for 12 years at IBM. Cook owns more than three million shares of Apple, less than a one per cent stake; he’s sold hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of shares over the years. Since 2005, he has also served on the board of Nike.
READ ALSO: Trump to Restore TikTok But Demands 50% US Ownership
Indoor event
Crowd size is a preoccupation of Trump’s, but the last-minute switch to an indoor event may dent his bragging rights, AFP reported.
More than 220,000 tickets were being distributed to the public before Trump announced Friday that frigid temperatures meant the inauguration would shift to the Capitol Rotunda, which can accommodate only about 600 people.
Trump said supporters could watch a live feed from Washington’s Capital One sports arena, which holds up to 20,000 — and he promised to drop in later.
The weather is likely to start traffic problems and an increase in flight cancellations, which is bad news for those traveling to Washington, D.C., for President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration on Monday.
On Monday, the high temperature is expected to be 24° F and the low is 9° F. That’s well below the averages for January 20 in Washington (Avg high: 43° F; Avg low: 28°), according to PBS News Special.