Alphabet CEO to join other tech leaders at Trump inauguration

• Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai will attend Donald Trump’s inauguration.
• This isn’t a shock: everyone else in tech is participating, and Google/Alphabet has already announced it will donate $1 million to the event.
• It’s certainly a sign of the times.

The tech contingent heading to Donald Trump’s inauguration next week is growing every day: Google CEO Sundar Pichai will also be there, according to a person familiar with his plans.

Pichai joins a long list of Silicon Valley CEOs who plan to be in Washington when Trump is sworn in, including Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, Tesla’s Elon Musk, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos and Uber’s Dara Khosrowshahi. Bloomberg reported Wednesday that Apple CEO Tim Cook will also attend.

It should come as no surprise that Pichai is also joining us. Last week, his company announced it would donate $1 million to Trump’s inaugural committee — as many other tech giants have also announced.

It’s also worth pointing out that when Trump won his first presidential election in 2016, he also received a gathering of tech CEOs to visit him.

But that trip took place at Trump Tower in New York — before his inauguration in 2017 — and most of it took place mostly off-camera.

This time, the goal is to make sure everyone knows you’re there — and that Donald Trump knows that everyone knows it.