President-elect Donald Trump is set to break another record: the most cash ever received by a presidential inauguration committee.
According to ABC News, the Trump-Vance inaugural committee is on track to surpass its $150 million fundraising goal as pledges pile up.
Taken at face value, that’s a lot of money. But it means a lot more when compared to the fundraising totals racked up by Trump’s 2017 inaugural committee and President Joe Biden’s 2021 committee.
According to filings with the Federal Election Commission, Biden’s PIC 2021, Inc. raised a total of $61.8 million, with its largest donations coming from a handful of companies that donated $1 million, including Pfizer (PFE) and Qualcomm (QCOM).
Trump’s first committee, the 58th Presidential Inauguration Committee, took home $106.8 million from donors, including many that also donated to Biden, such as Boeing (BA) and Lockheed Martin (LMT).
Here are some of the major companies and investors handing Trump a record amount of cash for his swearing-in ceremony.
Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, plans to make a personal commitment of $1 million to Trump’s 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 shared with Quartz.
He’s previously expressed some optimism about Trump’s upcoming administration, saying that he thinks Trump “will be very good at” supporting the U.S. and its allies to lead in AI infrastructure amid a race with China. Earlier in December, Altman said he isn’t worried about his former colleague and rival Elon Musk’s role in Trump’s White House despite an ongoing legal battle.
On Dec. 13, Amazon (AMZN) became the second public company known to be making the equivalent of a $2 million donation to the inaugural fund, a premium on its previous donations.
The company plans to donate $1 million to the fund and make a $1 million in-kind donation by streaming the January 20, 2025, event on Amazon Video.
That’s a big increase from the $58,000 the company gave to Trump’s 2017 inauguration. In 2021, Amazon gave $276,509 to Biden’s fund, while its subsidiary Amazon Web Services contributed $50,000.
The donation is part of Amazon founder and executive chairman Jeff Bezos’s plans to make inroads with Trump, who he has feuded with in the past. In October, he quashed plans from The Washington Post, which he owns, to endorse Trump’s Democratic rival.
Last month, Bezos met with Trump for dinner at his Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida, alongside Tesla’s (TSLA) Elon Musk. “EVERYBODY WANTS TO BE MY FRIEND!!!” Trump wrote on his Truth Social the following morning.
Meta (META) CEO Mark Zuckerberg likes to rock the boat every now and then. Earlier in December, he and his company became the first to reveal their plans to donate $1 million to the president-elect’s inauguration committee.
The tech giant didn’t donate to Trump’s 2017 inaugural fund or Joe Biden’s in 2021. But this time, Zuckerberg has a healthy appreciation — and possibly some fear — of Trump and his power.
He’s made a series of inroads to Trump this year, writing in August that he regretted not pushing back against calls from federal officials to remove COVID-19 related posts from Facebook and Instagram, calling Trump “badass” after an assassination attempt, and declining to endorse a presidential candidate.
Zuckerberg also visited Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida in November. Following the meeting, Meta said in a statement that Zuckerberg was “grateful” for the invitation and that “[i]t’s an important time for the future of American innovation.”
In December, Nick Clegg, Meta’s president of global affairs, said Zuckerberg hopes to play “an active role in the debates that any administration needs to have about maintaining America’s leadership in the technological sphere.”
Zuckerberg’s relationship with Trump went from warm to strictly professional over the course of the first Trump administration after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, when Facebook suspended the then-president for inciting the riot.
Trump said in a statement that June: “Next time I’m in the White House there will be no more dinners, at his request, with Mark Zuckerberg and his wife. It will be all business!” In a book published in September, Trump said the CEO would “spend the rest of his life in prison” if he plotted against him.
Rideshare service provider Uber (UBER) and its CEO made two separate donations of $1 million to Trump’s inaugural fund in November, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Uber donated $1 million to Biden’s 2021 inauguration but declined to make any donations in 2017. Khosrowshahi did not donate in 2021 and his gift to Trump’s inaugural marks his largest donation to a political candidate or inauguration fund to date, the Journal reported.
The donation comes as Uber looks to strengthen its ties to the incoming administration as a potential rival gains influence. Musk has aspirations of launching a Tesla ridehail service in 2025, with plans to begin in Texas or California.
Retail trading platform Robinhood Markets (HOOD) has donated $2 million to the Trump inauguration fund, citing its interest in the upcoming administration and its stances on regulation and cryptocurrencies.
“Robinhood is pleased to welcome in a new era of American innovation and sensible regulation that promotes free markets, investor access, and consumer choice,” Robinhood’s head of government and external affairs, Mary Elizabeth Taylor, said in a statement. “We look forward to working with President Trump and the incoming Administration to drive positive change in the markets, be an active voice for customers, and pursue our mission to democratize finance for all.”
Robinhood has gone all-in on crypto in recent months, launching crypto futures in the U.S. and Europe in July and buying the Bitstamp exchange a few days later. It also made Solana, Pepe, Cardano, XRP, and dogwifhat available for trading on its platform. It was one of the first platforms to allow Dogecoin trading on its app in 2021 and launched a cryptocurrency wallet in the same year.
In May, the company received formal notice that the Securities and Exchange Commission intends to take enforcement action against it. The company has denied the regulator’s classification of cryptocurrencies as securities.
Trump’s pick to lead the SEC, Paul Atkins, is expected to be much friendlier to cryptocurrency interests than the Biden administration, having led The Digital Chamber’s Token Alliance initiative since 2017.
Ken Griffin, the billionaire CEO of Citadel, founder of Citadel Securities, and owner of a $44.6 million Stegosaurus, said on Dec. 16 that he would donate $1 million to Trump’s inaugural fund despite a decline to financially back his campaign.
“I’m sure you’ll see me listed again as a contributor to the inauguration,” he told the crowd at a Miami-Dade League of Cities event, Bloomberg News reported.
In 2021, he donated $500,000 to Biden’s swearing-in ceremony. Four years earlier, he gave Trump’s inauguration committee $1 million.
Griffin, who says he voted for Trump, has been largely supportive of Trump — and said he wants to work with the president-elect’s administration — has repeatedly expressed some doubts about his tariff plans.
“I’m generally opposed to tariffs and haven’t been subtle about this,” Griffin said at the event. “It’s one part of his economic agenda, and we’ll see where that lands.”
Bank of America (BAC) confirmed to Quartz that it plans to make a donation to the inaugural fund, although it declined to disclose the size of its giving.
The bank gave $1 to both Trump’s 2017 inaugural committee and Biden’s inaugural committee, according to regulatory filings. It was one of the largest banking industry contributors to both committees.
Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan said in December that he expects Trump’s policies to favor mergers and acquisitions, echoing a common remark made by banks. The last Trump administration averaged 78 deals per year from 2017 to 2019, compared with 15 and 27 deals, respectively, in 2023 and 2024 so far.
Another major bank, Goldman Sach, told Reuters it also plans to donate an undisclosed amount to Trump’s inaugural committee. In 2016, Goldman was the sole major bank to ban its partners from donating to Trump’s campaign in order to steer clear of municipal bond and pension rules.
Brad Garlinghouse, the chief executive of the crypto company Ripple, recently told The New York Times he plans on donating $5 million in XRP, the company’s digital currency, to Trump’s inaugural fund.
Garlinghouse, unlike much of the crypto industry, made inroads with Vice President Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign. Ripple co-founder Chris Larsen also donated $11 million worth of XRP to the Harris campaign.
Garlinghouse, who emphasized that either a Harris or Trump victory would aid the crypto industry, supported Larsen’s donation at the time and slammed the Biden administration’s crypto policies.
“I respect Chris’ (and everyone’s!) right to support whomever they think is best to lead the U.S,” Garlinghouse said in October. “Ripple will continue to engage with both Democrats and Republicans in the final days of the campaigns (and after the election) to promote pro-crypto policies.”
Perplexity, an artificial intelligence startup launched in 2022, is matching the $1 million donation made by some of its larger colleagues in the tech industry.
The startup, which just closed a funding round at a $9 billion valuation, is building a search engine rival meant to compete with Alphabet’s Google. In March, Perplexity said it had 15 million active users, up from 10 million just two months earlier.
“As a newer but growing player in the AI space, we look forward to building a relationship with the incoming administration,” Perplexity Chief Business Officer Dmitry Shevelenko said in a statement. “We share a commitment to innovation and leveling the playing field for Little Tech and see this as an important moment to promote free speech, the open Internet, and avoiding regulatory capture in AI.”
“Unlike other tech companies who have recently donated to President Trump’s inaugural fund, Perplexity didn’t exist during his previous term, so this is an opportunity for us to collaborate on shared goals rather than mending a frayed relationship,” Shevelenko added.
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