Meta has donated $1 million (€950,000) to US President-elect Donald Trump’s inaugural fund, the company confirmed to several news organisations.
It comes after Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg met with Trump privately at the former president’s Mar-a-Lago estate in November, following a strained relationship.
Meta banned Trump from its social media platforms following the January 2021 insurrection at the US Capitol. Trump wrote in a book published in September that Zuckerberg would “spend the rest of his life in prison” if he tried to intervene in the 2024 election.
The Wall Street Journal was the first to report the donation, which also said that Meta, which is the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, did not donate to Trump’s 2017 inaugural fund or outgoing President Joe Biden’s 2021 inaugural fund.
Inaugural funds are used to pay for activities and events when a new president takes office.
Other tech titans have tried to cosy up to Trump. Elon Musk was vocal about Trump on his social media platform X and is now set to play a role in the new Trump administration by helping with a new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and Google CEO Sundar Pichai were some of the first tech leaders to congratulate Trump on his election win despite also having strained relationships with him.
In October, Trump said that Apple’s chief executive Tim Cook called him and expressed his concerns about financial penalties issued by the European Union.
Meanwhile, Zuckerberg in August told Republican lawmakers in a letter that he regretted that “government pressure” by the Biden administration led him to “censor” some Facebook and Instagram content during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Zuckerberg also reached out to Trump following the July assassination attempt and said in a podcast that the president-elect’s response was the attack was “badass”.
