Before President Trump returned to the White House in January, the titans of the tech industry went all out to win him over with inauguration donations and pilgrimages to Mar-a-Lago.
Yet upon taking office, Mr. Trump vowed to continue a fight to break up Meta, imposed tariffs that would raise the costs of Apple’s supply chains and restricted the exports of artificial intelligence chips from Nvidia and other chip makers. It seemed that the tech industry’s efforts to woo the president would not pay off.
Now, however, the biggest tech companies have gotten almost everything they wanted from Mr. Trump.
Since the summer, he has eliminated many limits on A.I. chip exports, fast-tracked the building of data centers that power A.I. development and pushed legislation that gave government approval to a type of cryptocurrency. This month, Mr. Trump signed an executive order to kill A.I. restrictions set by states and greenlighted sales of a more powerful Nvidia chip to America’s top rival, China.
“The conservative party stands for the free market and not picking winners and losers,” said Isabel Sunderland, who works on technology policy at Issue One, a nonpartisan political advocacy group, “yet what we’ve seen so far in the Trump administration is an administration that has picked the tech industry to win in ways that is contrary to his own base.”
Assiduously courted by tech companies and their leaders, Mr. Trump has effectively cemented his relationship with the wealthiest and most powerful U.S. industry into a mutually beneficial alliance. How long this entente might last is unclear, as Mr. Trump can be unpredictable. Yet the evolution could have implications for fast-growing technologies like A.I. and has already raised new issues that are likely to play into next year’s midterm elections.
Mr. Trump has used support from the tech companies to bolster his goal of U.S. leadership in A.I. and crypto, while securing victories for his America First economic agenda. This year, Amazon, Apple, Google, Meta, Nvidia, OpenAI and Oracle announced a combined $1.4 trillion in spending on domestic data centers and manufacturing projects, according to a tally by The New York Times.
For Silicon Valley, the alliance with Mr. Trump has meant a bonanza. Freed from potential regulation and aided by industry-friendly policies, Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia and Tesla have seen their shares soar. Bitcoin, the most popular cryptocurrency, hit record highs. And tech companies can continue developing A.I. largely unfettered.
But the relationship has also driven a wedge through the right, dividing Republican lawmakers and drawing criticism from conservative think tanks and populist figures like Steve Bannon, a former Trump adviser. Mr. Trump has let tech billionaires run rampant through his administration, they said, enabling policies that further enrich the industry while leaving other Americans behind with no tech safeguards.
“Big Tech is not a natural ally to our coalition,” said Wes Hodges, the head of tech policy at the right-leaning Heritage Foundation. “Our work is to keep the memory of Big Tech and their unique concentration of power that is a threat against conservatives.”
Liz Huston, a White House spokeswoman, said Mr. Trump’s relationship with the tech industry would help America prosper. “President Trump is leveraging his close relationships with private-sector titans to cement American technological dominance for the rest of the 21st century,” she said.
The tech industry’s spoils this year have followed a dogged lobbying campaign by the companies. When Elon Musk, the head of Tesla and SpaceX, left his advisory position in the Trump administration in May, other tech companies saw an opening.
David Sacks, a venture capitalist who is the White House’s A.I. and crypto czar, and other Silicon Valley insiders helped open the door for executives like Nvidia’s Jensen Huang to directly lobby the president. Other tech companies unabashedly threw themselves behind Mr. Trump’s projects, with Amazon, Meta, Google, Palantir and Coinbase donating to the effort to replace the White House’s East Wing with a ballroom.
“We’re seeing an industry that knows how to work the president,” said Jessica González, a co-chief executive of Free Press, a consumer and media advocacy group.
The flourishing relationship was evident in September at a White House dinner for tech leaders. Seated with Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg and the Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, Mr. Trump declared that the executives were “leading a revolution in business” and called them “the most brilliant people.”
In response, Sam Altman, OpenAI’s chief executive, praised Mr. Trump for being a “pro-business” president. Sundar Pichai, Google’s chief executive, commended Mr. Trump for his “leadership” on A.I., and Tim Cook, Apple’s chief executive, thanked the president for “setting the tone” for domestic manufacturing.
(The New York Times has sued OpenAI and Microsoft, claiming copyright infringement of news content related to A.I. systems. The companies have denied those claims.)
As Mr. Trump grew closer with the tech industry, some Republicans became concerned about what the relationship would mean for issues such as A.I. safety for children, A.I.’s effect on jobs and the proliferation of energy-gobbling data centers powering A.I.
In July, Republicans overwhelmingly voted against a provision in a congressional spending package that would have blocked states from imposing regulations on A.I. The provision had been proposed by Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, and backed by Mr. Sacks, who helped revive the idea through the executive order that Mr. Trump signed this month.
Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, a Republican, blasted the efforts to curb states from having their own A.I. laws. “We have a right to do this,” he said after the executive order was signed.
Lawmakers including Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Republican of Georgia, also ramped up their criticism. “States must retain the right to regulate and make laws on AI and anything else for the benefit of their state,” she posted on social media last month. “Federalism must be preserved.”
In a November poll of American voters by the Institute for Family Studies, a right-leaning think tank, 57 percent — including 43 percent of those who identified as Trump voters — said they opposed federal efforts to block state laws on A.I.
In many places around the country, Mr. Trump’s policies encouraging construction of data centers have also become contentious. Meta, Amazon, Microsoft and others have been on a building spree of the large computing facilities, which consume energy and water and have been blamed for driving up people’s utility bills.
Two Democrats won seats last month on the Georgia Public Service Commission, which regulates the state’s electric utility, with a message of affordability amid the boom in data centers.
In Port Washington, Wis., three residents were arrested this month when they participated in a demonstration against a $15 billion data center project by OpenAI and Oracle. Locals fear the project will lead to large tax breaks for the tech companies and hog supplies of fresh water, residents said.
“There are lots of long-term costs for residents,” said Michael Beaster, a Port Washington resident who is part of a group trying to oust the mayor over the construction of the data center.
Others are concerned that Mr. Trump’s alliance with the tech industry could overshadow concerns about A.I.’s effects on child safety and speech. OpenAI and other A.I. companies have been sued by parents whose children died by suicide after, they said, forming unhealthy relationships with A.I. chatbots.
“It should not be at odds to say we are pro-American A.I. and also need to protect kids,” said Evan Swarztrauber, a senior fellow at the Foundation for American Innovation, a think tank, and a former adviser to Brendan Carr, the chair of the Federal Communications Commission.
Lori Schott, a lifetime Republican from Colorado, was part of a group of parents who recently lobbied on Capitol Hill for social media and A.I. child safety laws. Her daughter, Annalee, took her own life at age 18 and left journals showing her struggle with exposure to toxic social media content.
Ms. Schott said “grass roots” Republicans like herself were struggling to reconcile the Trump administration’s overt friendliness with tech executives. “Our votes will reflect a party that puts kids’ safety first,” she said.
Cecilia Kang reports on technology and regulatory policy for The Times from Washington. She has written about technology for over two decades.
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