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President Donald Trump’s relationship with Big Tech has been tense in the past, marked by public feuds with CEOs such as Jeff Bezos of Amazon (AMZN) and Mark Zuckerberg of Meta (META).
However, despite historic tensions, major tech executives, including Tesla (TSLA) CEO Elon Musk and Apple (AAPL) CEO Tim Cook, attended Trump’s inauguration on Monday — signaling an effort to stay in the president's favor.
In the video above, Josh Lipton discusses the possibility of more consolidation in small-cap tech firms as well as the ongoing legal challenges for Big Tech, such as antimonopoly cases against top companies.
Watch President Donald Trump's 2025 inauguration ceremony while staying up to date with all the market news and economic data covered by Yahoo Finance.
This post was written by Josh Lynch
Several big tech CEOs are in attendance at today's inauguration. However, Donald Trump's relationship with big tech has been anything but smooth. Joining us now for more, we want to bring in Yahoo Finance's Josh Lipton. Josh.
Well, Shana, there are times when Donald Trump can sound like anything but big tech's friend. For example, when he announced the nomination of Gail Slater as head of the Justice Department's antitrust division, he ripped into big tech saying big tech has run wild for years, stifling competition in our most innovative sector and as we all know, using its market power to crack down on the rights of so many Americans, as well as those of little tech. American tech CEOs, we know have a complicated relationship with Trump, who has publicly sparred with them in the past like Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg. But these executives also know there's a lot on the line for their companies and industry as Trump now moves back into the White House from AI to antitrust efforts to federal regulations. So it is no surprise that these CEOs are now trying to stay on Trump's good side. Bezos, Zuckerberg, and Apple CEO Tim Cook are among those who attended the inauguration, joined of course by Trump ally and Tesla CEO Elon Musk.
I think it's it's super interesting that Elon Musk has really, you know, agreed to participate in a serious way in the administration and that the other kind of major tech executives are coming out. I mean, look, the the financial in innovation of the country is driven in large part by these companies and these these incredible executives of of of these companies. So it's so it is a good sign, I think that they're coming out for this inauguration.
Now, I spoke with Stifel's Brian Gardner about how he sees the relationship between Trump and big tech evolving. Among the trends to watch, remember, big tech has big legal challenges. The DOJ is pursuing two anti-monopoly cases against Google, another against Apple, while the FTC is suing meta, has multiple suits against Amazon. Gardner believes those cases will continue as Trump takes office. And what about M&A? Should investors expect a pickup in activity there? Gardner says the door is open to small cap tech consolidation, but large cap tech, not so much. And there's more commonality, he says, between Trump and Biden on large cap antitrust enforcement than many may realize. Back to you all.
