Dive Brief:
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A number of Silicon Valley leaders will attend President-elect Donald Trump’s tech summit in New York this week, Recode reports.
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Expected attendees include Alphabet CEO Larry Page, Apple CEO Tim Cook, Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins, IBM CEO Ginni Rometty, Intel CEO Brian Krzanich and Oracle CEO Safra Catz. The Wall Street Journal reports Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk will also attend.
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Those who reportedly declined Trump’s invitation for various reasons include Uber CEO Travis Kalanick, Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff, Slack CEO Stewart Butterfield and Dropbox CEO Drew Houston. Hewlett-Packard CEO Meg Whitman, who has been a vocal Trump critic, also declined the invitation.
Dive Insight:
Invitations were sent last week to a small number of tech leaders whose names were not publicly released. Peter Thiel, who has served as a personal advisor to Trump on tech issues during the campaign, was one of the names that appeared on the invitation asking tech leaders to join the Trump team in New York.
CEOs from some of the largest tech companies in the world will be together in one room with Trump. The event may provide an opportunity for the tech industry, which largely ignored Trump leading up to the election, to mend fences with the new administration.
"I plan to tell the President-elect that we are with him and will help in any way we can," said Catz of Oracle in a statement. "If he can reform the tax code, reduce regulation and negotiate better trade deals, the U.S. technology industry will be stronger and more competitive than ever."
Tech leaders have been critical of many of Trump’s positions on issues such as immigration and encryption and largely supported Hillary Clinton. Some think that certain proposed regulations could further alienate the U.S. tech industry and actually harm its economic posture.
