Dive Brief:
- As expected, president-elect Donald Trump met yesterday with executives from a range of tech giants including Apple, Alphabet, Microsoft, Amazon, Facebook, Intel, Oracle, IBM, Cisco and Tesla, as reported by CNBC.
- The meeting was described as “productive” by Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos.
- After the meeting, Trump offered tech execs a direct line to the Oval Office as he said, “We have no formal chain of command around here,” and stated he wanted to see Silicon Valley continue with its “incredible innovation.”
Dive Insight:
During the election, Trump had, for the most part, what could be charitably described as a contentious relationship with Silicon Valley and other tech firms, with Trump threatening Amazon with regulation because of what he considered unfair media coverage from the Washington Post, which Bezos also owns. Yesterday's meeting, then, could be seen as a sign that the president-elect is looking to build better relationships with the tech industry. It is unclear if any substantive discussion of policy took place.
Attendees included execs from many of the biggest digital marketing players as well as a few emerging ones, including Apple, Alphabet, Microsoft, Amazon, Facebook, Intel, Oracle, IBM, Cisco and Tesla. Twitter was a notable no- show with some media outlets reporting CEO Jack Dorsey wasn’t invited as part of a guest list reportedly put together by Trump advisor and PayPal found Peter Thiel.
Trump’s upcoming presidency remains something of a cipher in terms of policies that might impact tech companies, but there have been early signals that at least the Federal Communication Commission is prepared to begin rolling back internet oversight over areas such as privacy policies that impact data collection used by marketing and tech firms, as well as rules against cross-ownership of media.