Donald Trump said he is meeting with Amazon founder Jeff Bezos next week as the president-elect continues to strengthen his ties to billionaire tech leaders.
On Thursday, Trump was revealed as Time magazine’s 2024 Person of the Year and rang the opening bell at the New York Stock Exchange to celebrate amid cheers of “USA” from Wall Street titans and business bigwigs.
“Bezos is coming up next week,” Trump revealed in an interview with CNBC after he rang the bell.
The president-elect said he already met with Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg and nodded to his close ties with Elon Musk, the world’s richest person whose net worth topped a record-breaking $400 billion on Wednesday.
“I want to get ideas from them,” Trump said, speaking about business leaders. “Look, we want them to do well.”
Bezos’ space company, Blue Origin, has been involved in a number of federal contracts with NASA.
Amazon, which is worth approximately $2.4 trillion, also has several government contracts. It secured a $10 billion cloud computing contract from the National Security Agency after protesting against the award originally being given to Microsoft.
Trump’s history with Bezos’ companies is a bit more complicated. On Oct. 31, toward the end of his campaign, Trump filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission alleging The Washington Post – which Bezos bought in 2013 for $250 million – aided Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign with its critical coverage of him.
Bezos later blocked his paper from publishing a drafted endorsement of Harris in a move that elicited outrage from left-leaning staffers and readers. More than 200,000 readers canceled their subscriptions and some editorial writers resigned.
At The New York Times’ DealBook summit earlier this month, Bezos said he was “very optimistic” about Trump’s second term.
“I am very hopeful, he seems to have a lot of energy around reducing regulation, and if I can help him do that, I am going to help him,” Bezos said.
Musk – who owns Tesla, SpaceX, xAI, the social media platform X and has a net worth of $433.8 billion, according to Forbes – has been a close confidant of the president-elect and one of his most outspoken, influential supporters.
He donated a whopping $250 million to his campaign efforts and pro-Trump PACs, according to FEC filings, and rallied on Trump’s behalf in swing states. He also joined the president-elect on election night at his Mar-a-Lago residence.
His space company, SpaceX, is another large federal contractor. Musk has also been selected to lead the newly-created Department of Government Efficiency, which aims to slash federal spending – an idea of Musk’s that he floated during Trump’s campaign.
