Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg to attend Trump inauguration

Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg will attend President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration on Monday, according to an official involved in planning the event.

They will take pride of place at the ceremony, seated together on the dais with other notable guests, including Trump’s Cabinet nominees and elected officials.

The three tech titans have all tried to curry favor with Trump over the past year, led by Musk donating more than a quarter of a billion dollars in campaign funds to help elect Trump. CEO of Tesla and SpaceX — and co-head of a new Trump administration advisory body called DOGE — Musk has often been at Trump’s side since endorsing him for president in July.

Meta CEO Zuckerberg this month overhauled his lobbying team and content moderation policies to align with the new Republican administration. Meta also donated $1 million to Trump’s inaugural fund.

Bezos, the Amazon founder and executive chairman of the company, decided last fall that the Washington Post, which he owns, would not support the presidential race, effectively sidelining opinion staff who wanted to support Vice President Kamala Harris. Amazon also contributed $1 million to Trump’s inaugural fund.

The three men are among the richest people in the world, their fortunes based on the technology boom of the past two decades. Musk ranks No. 1, Bezos No. 2 and Zuckerberg No. 3, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

Their combined net worth: $885 billion as of Monday, according to Bloomberg.

NBC News has contacted representatives for Musk, Bezos and Zuckerberg about their attendance. A representative for Meta declined to comment. The others did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

All three men have supported both Democrats and Republicans over the years, according to federal records.

Tech leaders have high stakes in Trump’s second term, not only because of potential tax and trade policy changes, but also because of issues specific to their companies.

Meta faces a possible antitrust lawsuit as soon as April over allegations from the Federal Trade Commission that it acted illegally to maintain a monopoly on personal social networks. Amazon is a major federal contractor thanks to its cloud computing business, which was a source of conflict with Trump during his first term. SpaceX is a major federal contractor through its rocket launches and its Internet services business, Starlink.

Musk, Zuckerberg and Bezos are frequent rivals in the tech industry, vying for influence over topics such as artificial intelligence, space exploration and media.

Bezos is trying to rival Elon Musk’s dominance in rocket launches with his space company Blue Origin, although Blue Origin canceled its maiden launch attempt on Monday.

Zuckerberg and Musk are longtime rivals in AI research and are each investing billions of dollars in new AI models. In 2022, Musk also began to compete with Zuckerberg on social media by purchasing X, which was then Twitter.

Bezos and Zuckerberg compete in Amazon and Meta’s advertising and purchasing duel.