What Big Tech CEOs want from a second Trump presidency

Leaders at top big tech firms rushed to congratulate Donald Trump on his landslide election victory as they sought to rebuild bridges with the president-elect — and his most influential Silicon Valley booster, Elon Musk — ahead of a transformative period for the sector.

The chief executives of Amazon, Apple, Google, Meta and Microsoft posted supportive messages on social media on Wednesday, which stood in contrast to their more circumspect reaction to the results of the 2016 and 2020 elections. All of their companies have since faced significant regulatory probes and antitrust threats as part of a crackdown by Joe Biden’s Democratic administration. 

They now stand to gain much from a more tech- and business-friendly attitude from Trump, if they can win over a mercurial politician who in the past has repeatedly clashed with what he considers a left-leaning constituency that has funded his opponents and censored him.

Musk has already adopted the role as Trump’s emissary to the tech world after spending more than $100mn backing his campaign and spearheading a relentless social media crusade with dozens of posts a day on his platform X. In return, Trump called him a “super-genius” and promised him a wide-ranging advisory role focused on cutting government costs and regulations.

The world’s richest man — who also runs Tesla, SpaceX and xAI — posted American flag emojis in reply to Apple’s Tim Cook and Microsoft’s Satya Nadella on X, while commenting “indeed” to Amazon chief executive Andy Jassy and “cool” to Google boss Sundar Pichai.

“America is a nation of builders. Soon, you will be free to build,” Musk pinned to the top of his X profile.

Here is a look at what tech leaders are hoping to gain from a Trump presidency.

Deals

Trump’s second term is expected to be an immediate catalyst for corporate takeovers, private equity deals and venture capital exits, which have been paralysed for years by heightened scrutiny from Biden’s competition watchdogs and high interest rates.

Rather than acquiring promising artificial intelligence start-ups outright, the likes of Microsoft, Amazon and Google instead got creative, hiring their founders or licensing their technology, which allowed them to avoid more conventional antitrust scrutiny.

Fears of deals being rejected also blocked venture-backed start-ups from making lucrative sales. 

Their bête noire has been Lina Khan, chair of the Federal Trade Commission, allied with Jonathan Kanter, head of antitrust at the Department of Justice. The pair have blocked M&A deals, targeted tech monopolies and scrutinised partnerships between AI start-ups and Big Tech companies, including Microsoft.

“The dealmaking has begun, conversations are already happening among boards of directors,” said Boris Feldman, co-head of Freshfields’ global tech practice. “There will be a flood, knowing that when it’s time for regulatory approval, Khan will be back at Yale Law School.”

Investment bankers and advisers to Silicon Valley’s tech giants and venture capitalists were also buoyant as the US dollar and stock markets surged.

“From a corporate perspective [we are] thrilled. The flood gates are about to open and we’re going to print money,” said one person at Goldman Sachs, whose stock rose 13 per cent on Wednesday.

Antitrust

Trump’s return to the White House could also spell relief from antitrust probes in the US and Europe.

“Congratulations President Trump on your victory! We look forward to engaging with you,” Apple CEO Cook said on X. In 2016, Cook helped raise funds for Trump’s rival, Hillary Clinton, but charmed Trump during his first term. Cook has otherwise kept below the radar as his company has come under pressure from a coalition of global regulators. 

Khan and Kanter have spearheaded a vigorous campaign against Big Tech’s corporate power. Most notably the DoJ this year won a landmark ruling against Google in search, while other lawsuits have been filed to challenge the market power of Apple, Amazon and Meta.

Many predict that Khan’s days are numbered at the FTC. Musk wrote on X last week that she “will be fired soon”.

Analysts have speculated that Trump could direct the DoJ to discontinue its monopoly lawsuit against Apple, filed earlier this year. The iPhone maker is also set to be fined under the EU’s new Digital Markets Act over its App Store rules. Trump has made no secret of his contempt for the EU regulator.

“An interesting question is whether Trump or [vice-president JD] Vance will tell the EU and UK to stop punishing US companies, especially in light of challenges from China?” said Freshfields’ Feldman. “Biden didn’t push back on it; if the tech companies feel they are building a relationship with Trump, that might be their ask: help us get the Europeans off our backs.”

In October, Trump said in a podcast interview that Cook had called him to complain about a recent EU court ruling that required the company to pay €13bn in back taxes in Ireland, as well as a €1.8bn antitrust fine in March for stifling competition from rival music streaming services.

“[Cook] said they are using that [money] to run their enterprise,” Trump said. “I said — but Tim, I’ve got to get elected first. But I’m not going to let them take advantage of our companies. That won’t be happening.”

Yet Trump and his followers have a complex relationship with antitrust enforcement. The major antitrust lawsuit against Google, which the company lost this year, was filed under his watch, and JD Vance has previously voiced support for the FTC’s Khan — and for breaking up Google, which is something Biden’s DoJ said it might pursue as a remedy in the search monopoly case.

Social media

Social media companies are trying to avoid invoking the wrath of Trump, who has accused them of censorship and silencing conservative speech. In 2022, Trump said that if re-elected, he would sign an executive order banning federal agencies from “colluding with any organisation, business or person to censor, limit, categorise or impede the lawful speech of American citizens” and curb funds to universities found to have “engaged in censorship activities”.

Mark Zuckerberg, whose companies include Facebook and Instagram, has appeared to warm to Trump over the past few months. Over the summer he called Trump a “badass” for his reaction to an assassination attempt and wrote a letter to the Republican-led House judiciary committee accusing Biden of repeatedly pressuring Meta to “censor” certain Covid-19 content during the pandemic.

On Thursday he wrote on Threads, his X clone, to congratulate Trump on “a decisive victory,” adding: “Looking forward to working with you.”

One of the most closely watched sagas will be the potential US ban of TikTok over national security concerns linked to its Chinese parent company, ByteDance. Trump proposed a TikTok ban when he was president in 2020. Since then he has since flipped his position, arguing he would not ban the app because it is in America’s interests to ensure there is competition for Zuckerberg’s Facebook, which he has criticised as an “enemy of the people”.

TikTok has sued the government to stop legislation passed during the Biden administration that would require the app to cut ties with ByteDance or shut down in the US by mid-January. A ban of the $230bn short-video app could hurt its biggest US investors, including Susquehanna International Group, which owns a 15 per cent stake, and Coatue Management, which owns less than 5 per cent. Jeff Yass, co-founder and managing director of SIG, was a major donor to the Trump campaign this year.

Artificial intelligence

The US approach to artificial intelligence is among the biggest policy issues for tech, with debates about regulation and the safety of the nascent and fast-moving technology unresolved.

Trump has not articulated his own approach to AI, but many anticipate a light touch. In his first term, Trump issued an executive order “committed to strengthening American leadership in AI”, which noted that “innovation can be hampered or driven overseas by overly restrictive government regulations.” But that was before AI became one of the hottest — and most lucrative — investments in Silicon Valley.

Trump has vowed to cancel an executive order from Biden on AI, which reflected the Democrats’ more cautious approach and emphasis on safety and security standards over unfettered innovation. The president-elect said he would ban the use of AI to censor the speech of American citizens “on day one”.

On this Trump shares common ground with Musk, who has stressed the importance of the US winning the global AI race against China. He has raised billions of dollars to fund his own start-up, xAI, even while warning that AI’s unchecked development poses an existential threat to humanity. 

Musk has also sued OpenAI, the start-up he co-founded with Sam Altman in 2015, for straying from its original non-profit mission to develop AI for the benefit of all. The ChatGPT maker has since grown to be one of the world’s most valuable private companies worth $150bn. 

Altman’s reaction to Trump’s victory was symbolic of the transformation that has occurred in Silicon Valley in the four years since he left office. “This feels like the worst thing to happen in my life,” Altman wrote in 2016.

He was more conciliatory on Wednesday: “Congrats to President Trump. I wish for his huge success in the job.”

Reporting by Stephen Morris, Tabby Kinder, George Hammond, Cristina Criddle, Michael Acton and Hannah Murphy