Amazon Plans Big Inauguration Donation as Jeff Bezos Warms to Trump

Jeff Bezos’ Amazon is reportedly planning to donate $1 million to President-elect Donald Trump’s inaugural fund—mirroring a similar donation from Meta, the social media company founded by Mark Zuckerberg, earlier this week.

The two billionaires’ decision to open their pocketbooks comes as tech leaders have begun softening their tone towards the incoming administration.

Bezos, the executive chairman of Amazon and currently the second-wealthiest person in the world according to the Forbes billionaires list, is planning a hefty donation and a trip to Mar-a-Lago as part of his recent move from one-time Trump critic to an “optimist” about the incoming administration.

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The seven-figure donation was first reported by the Wall Street Journal, citing anonymous sources, and later confirmed by CNN. Amazon previously donated a much smaller sum of $57,746 to Trump’s first inauguration in 2017.

Bezos is also reportedly planning to visit Trump at Mar-a-Lago sometime next week. Trump himself confirmed that Bezos was making the pilgrimage in an interview with CNBC on Thursday after ringing the opening bell at the New York Stock Exchange.

Google CEO Sundar Pichai is also planning a visit to Mar-a-Lago, tech outlet The Information first reported on Thursday.

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Trump clashed with Bezos during his first administration—with Amazon, Bezos’ personal life, and The Washington Post, the newspaper Bezos has owned since 2013, all becoming targets for the president’s wrath.

But Bezos has spent the last few months seemingly offering an olive branch to the president-elect, and was one of the first billionaires to congratulate Trump after his victory in November. Trump also reportedly met with executives from the Bezos-owned Blue Origin before the election. The space firm is one of the primary competitors to Elon Musk’s SpaceX for government contracts.

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In comments last week at the New York Times DealBook summit, Bezos said he believed Trump was “calmer” and “more confident, more settled” than he was during his first time, and expressed optimism about his stated efforts to slash regulation—echoing the enthusiasm of some of Trump’s favorite tech leaders like Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, who were selected to lead a government cost-cutting committee.

“I think it’s very interesting, I’m actually very optimistic this time around,” Bezos told Andrew Ross Sorkin. “He seems to have a lot of energy around reducing regulation, and my point of view—if I can help him do that, I’m going to help him. Because we do have too much regulation in this country.”