'Right now everybody in this room has to like me - at least a little bit': Trump gathers Silicon Valley's biggest bosses and praises them as 'amazing' - then takes credit for their stock prices soaring
- Meeting with president-elect comes after much of tech industry fiercely opposed his election, with PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel the only tech bigwig to support the Republican nominee
- Tim Cook and Elon Musk attended today's Trump Tower meeting - but Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg stayed away, sending Sheryl Sandberg instead
- At the meeting, Trump told the tech giants, 'There's nobody like you in the world,' while boasting about the stock market's post-election 'bounce' that likely improved the companies' standings on Wall Street
Donald Trump gathered Silicon Valley executives together for a roundtable meeting, in an attempt to smooth over frictions after a contentious presidential campaign.
The biggest names in attendance were Apple's Tim Cook – who publicly supported Trump's Democratic rival Hillary Clinton – and Tesla founder Elon Musk, who would meet Trump separately after the roundtable.
Looking around the room Trump called the group gathered 'amazing' and then boasted about the stock market 'bounce' that followed his election, which helped many of the businesses represented in the room.
'So right now everybody in this room has to like me – at least a little bit,' Trump told the crowd.
'But we're going to try and have that bounce continue,' Trump pledged.
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Silicon Valley bigs: Amazon's chief Jeff Bezos, Larry Page of Alphabet, Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, Vice President-elect Mike Pence, President-elect Donald Trump, Peter Thiel, co-founder and former CEO of PayPal, Tim Cook of Apple and Safra Catz of Oracle attend a meeting at Trump Tower
Donald Trump entertained a number of Silicon Valley CEO's and bosses including Amazon's Jeff Bezos and Facebook's Sheryl Sandberg
Donald Trump (left) thanked his one Silicon Valley backer, Peter Thiel (right), who brought a number of tech titans to Trump Tower today
'Right now everybody in this room has to like me - at least a little bit,' said Donald Trump to tech executives including PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel (center) and Apple CEO Tim Cook (right)
Oracle's CEO Safra Catz, one of the top women in tech, attended today's meeting at Trump Tower, along with top executives from Facebook, Tesla, Google and IBM
The president-elect's children: Donald Jr. (left), Ivanka (middle) and Eric Trump (right) sat through the meeting today with Silicon Valley bigwigs
Donald Trump's three adult children including Eric Trump (left) and Ivanka Trump (right) attended the meeting today with Silicon Valley leaders, again raising questions about the role they will play in both the Trump White House and the handling of the Trump business empire
Donald Trump's incoming economic adviser Gary Cohn (left), the current president of Goldman Sachs, along with Trump's commerce pick Wilbur Ross, sat through today's meeting with Silicon Valley's top brass
United States President-elect Donald Trump, US Vice President-elect Mike Pence, cabinet nominees and technology company chiefs are seen at the meeting
Facebook's Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg (left) attended a meeting for Silicon Valley executives alongside Vice President-elect Mike Pence (center) and Donald Trump (right)
While Mark Zuckerberg skipped the meeting, Facebook's COO Sheryl Sandberg (left) attended, as did Jeff Bezos (right) of Amazon and the Washington Post. Trump was critical of the Post's coverage through the campaign
It was Peter Thiel, Trump's one prominent Silicon Valley backer, that brought the tech titans and the president-elect face-to-face.
Safra Catz, the CEO of Oracle, had been the first to arrive at Trump Tower, after issuing a statement setting out what she, and likely the others, were likely to say.
'If he can reform the tax code, reduce regulation, and negotiate better trade deals, the U.S. technology community will be stronger and more competitive than ever,' Catz said in a statement.
Soon after Amazon.com's Jeff Bezos arrived. He's also the owner of the Washington Post, one of the many media outlets that Trump took issue with during his presidential campaign.
Other attendees included Facebook's Sheryl Sandberg, Alphabet's Larry Page and Eric Schmidt, Palantier's Alex Karp, Intel's Brian Krzanich, Cisco's Chuck Robbins, IBM's Ginni Rometty and Saya Nadella of Microsoft.
Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates paid the president-elect a visit yesterday at Trump Tower.
First arrival: Safra Catz, the CEO of Oracle, was the first of the tech giant bosses to arrive at Trump Tower
Talks: Catz said she hoped Trump would move on tax code reform, reducing regulation and negotiating better trade deals
Amazon.com's CEO Jeff Bezos, who also owns the Washington Post, arrived for a meeting with Donald Trump today at Trump Tower
Amazon and Washington Post head Jeff Bezos was the second tech titan to arrive today for a meeting between team Trump and Silicon Valley
Google giants Larry Page (left), now the CEO of the search engine's parent company Alphabet, and Eric Schmidt (right), the chairman of Alphabet, are spotted arriving at a meeting with President-elect Donald Trump
Tesla's Elon Musk (right) participated in a roundtable meeting with President-elect Donald Trump and met with him personally after the big meet-and-greet
Ginni Rometty, the president and CEO of IBM, was among the Silicon Valley titans spending time with President-elect Donald Trump and his team today in New York
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella was spotted leaving a meeting with President-elect Donald Trump and his team at Trump Tower today in New York. Yesterday's the company co-founder, Bill Gates, took a meeting with the president-elect
Cisco's CEO Chuck Robbins is caught entering Trump Tower today for a meeting with the president-elect, his team, and other Silicon Valley bigwigs
Reporters were briefly led into the room, in which Trump hosted the tech titans, along with his three adult kids, Ivanka, Eric and Donald Jr.
The adult children's presence comes at a time when their expanded role is sparking controversy, as they were originally supposed to be charged with handling Trump's business ventures while he was in the White House.
Trump's Vice President-elect Mike Pence, adviser Steve Bannon, incoming chief-of-staff Reince Priebus, commerce secretary pick Wilbur Ross and economic adviser selection Gary Cohn, were also in attendance.
Trump kicked off the meeting by complimenting Thiel.
'He got about just the biggest applause at the Republican National Convention,' Trump said.
'He's ahead of the curve. And I want to thank you. You're a very special guy,' Trump added, grabbing the hand of Thiel, who was sitting on his left-hand side.
The president-elect then addressed the full group.
'So I want to add that I'm here to help you folks do well,' Trump said. 'You're doing well right now and I'm very honored by the bounce.'
Trump was referring to the post-election bounce on the stock market.
'They're all talking about the bounce,' he repeated.
Trump said the most important thing was 'we want you to keep going with the incredible innovation.'
'There's nobody like you in the world, in the world. There's nobody like the people in this room,' the president-elect told the titans.
Trump pledged to be there for Silicon Valley and make it easier for American companies to trade.
'And you'll call my people, you'll call me. It doesn't make any difference,' Trump continued. 'We have no formal chain of command over here.'
After several minutes, reporters were ushered out of the room.
Attendees, like Sandberg, will likely bring up their own priorities like strong encryption and liability protections from content shared by their users.
The meeting was billed as an introductory session, said four sources briefed on the talks, all of whom requested anonymity to discuss a private meeting.
Early reviews of the meeting suggested it went as well as it could.
Bezos labeled the get-together 'productive,' according to Politico.
'I shared the view that the administration should make innovation one of its key pillars, which would create a huge number of jobs across the whole country, in all sectors, not just tech – agriculture, infrastructure, manufacturing – everywhere,' the Amazon CEO and Washington Post owner said in a statement.
The CEOs of Airbnb and Uber were invited but are not attending. Uber's Travis Kalanick will instead be traveling in India all week, according to a person familiar with his plans.
Top Twitter executives were left out in the cold, despite the micro-blogging site being one of the president-elect's favorite mediums to get his message out to supporters.
Trump spokesman Sean Spicer said the reason why Twitter wasn't invited was because 'the conference table was only so big.'
But a spokesman for the president-elect's transition team told Reuters: 'They weren't invited because they aren't big enough.'
With a market capitalization of $13.85 billion, Twitter is smaller than Facebook and Amazon. The smallest company in attendance was Tesla, with a market capitalization of $31.92 billion.
One source familiar with Trump's relationship with Twitter said the decision to exclude Twitter Chief Executive Officer Jack Dorsey was motivated by the president-elect's ire at the company, which rejected an advertising deal with his campaign in October.
Trump's election campaign had offered to pay to have an emoji, or small picture, that would show up on tweets during the second presidential debate anytime Twitter users tweeted the phrase "#Crooked Hillary," Republican Trump's nickname for his Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton.
Twitter rejected the deal, saying it might mislead users who would not be able to tell that the campaign had paid for the emoji.
The Trump transition spokesman said the emoji had nothing to do with the invitation omission. The official said Trump has had public spats with other tech leaders who were invited, including Bezos, who also owns The Washington Post, and Cook, who hosted a fundraiser for Clinton.
Trump clashed with Silicon Valley on several issues during the campaign, including immigration, government surveillance and encryption, and his surprise victory last month alarmed many companies that feared he might follow through on his pledges.
He has said that many tech companies are overvalued by investors.
'You look at some of these tech stocks that are so, so weak as a concept and a company and they're selling for so much money,' he told Reuters in an interview in May.
Those concerns have not been assuaged in recent weeks as Trump has threatened to upset trade relationships with China, a key market for U.S. tech companies, and appoint officials who favor expanded surveillance programs.
'For some of the companies, there was some hesitation about whether to attend' because of sharp political and personal differences with Trump, one tech industry source said.
Nearly 600 employees of technology companies pledged in an open letter on Tuesday to refuse to help Trump's administration build a data registry to track people based on their religion or assist in mass deportations.
Silicon Valley enjoyed a warm rapport with President Barack Obama and heavily supported Democrat Hillary Clinton during the presidential campaign.
Schmidt was photographed on election night at Clinton headquarters wearing a staff badge, and Musk said in interviews before the election that Trump's character reflected poorly on the United States.
Musk was quoted saying that Trump 'is probably not the right guy' to be president of the United States.
Despite those tensions, Trump named Musk to a business advisory council that will give private-sector input to Trump after he takes office on Jan. 20.
Uber's Kalanick was also appointed to the council.
Invitation: Trump's move to reach out to Silicon Valley also saw Elon Musk and Uber's Travis Kalanick appointed to his business advisory council
Not attending: Travis Kalanick, of Uber, is in India but was named to Trump's business advisory panel
Tech mogul Peter Thiel, a Trump supporter who spoke at the GOP convention, helped organize the Silicon Valley get-together
From the employees of the 10 largest Fortune 500 tech companies, Trump raised just $179,400 from 982 campaign donors who contributed more than $200.
Clinton raised $4.4 million from the employees of the same companies, with more than 20,400 donations, a Reuters review of contribution data found.
Trump publicly bashed the industry during the campaign. He urged his supporters to boycott Apple products over the company's refusal to help the FBI unlock an iPhone associated with last year's San Bernardino, California, shootings, threatened antitrust action against Amazon and demanded that tech companies build their products in the United States.
In another attack on Bezos, he suggested that the Amazon CEO was using is ownership of The Washington Post as a tax-dodging 'scam.'
He also got in a spat with Facebook's Zuckerberg over immigration.
Trump has also been an opponent of the Obama administration's net neutrality rules barring internet service providers from obstructing or slowing consumer access to web content.
Two advisers to his Federal Communications Commission transition team are opponents of the rules, as are the two Republicans on the FCC.
Last week, the two Republicans on the panel urged a quick reversal of many Obama policies and one, Commissioner Ajit Pai, said he believed that net neutrality's 'days are numbered.'
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