Four of the five richest men in the world were among the prominent billionaires who attended President Donald Trump's inauguration Monday morning, with a combined net worth of $1.2 trillion. Many of them were hoping to deepen their relationship with the pro-business president as he assumed office.
The three richest people in the world attended several inauguration morning events: Elon Musk ($433.9 billion), the CEO of Tesla, Mark Zuckerberg ($211.8 billion), and Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon (worth $239.4 billion, according to Forbes), who spent more than a quarter of a billion dollars to help Trump win the November election. Along with billionaire donor Miriam Adelson ($31.9 billion) and former Fox News Chairman Rupert Murdoch ($22.2 billion), OpenAI CEO Sam Altman ($1.1 billion) and Apple CEO Tim Cook ($2.2 billion), who contributed to the inauguration, were in the Capitol Rotunda Monday morning.
The richest person in France and the leader of the LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton luxury company, Bernard Arnault ($179.6 billion), attended the inauguration with his son, Alexandre. The richest man in India, Mukesh Ambani ($98.1 billion), was said to have attended inauguration ceremonies. Trump's pal Phil Ruffin, a $4.7 billion casino mogul from Las Vegas, was also seen at the Capitol.
Vivek Ramaswamy ($1 billion) and Howard Lutnick ($1.5 billion), two billionaires and their spouses who attended the inauguration, have been offered prominent positions in the Trump administration. According to Bloomberg, Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong ($12.8 billion) had not yet been spotted at the swearing-in but was invited to inauguration-related parties.
Several billionaires, including Stephen Feinberg ($5 billion), Warren Stephens ($3.4 billion), Jared Isaacman ($1.9 billion), Steve Witkoff ($1 billion), Linda McMahon (wife of $3 billion Vince McMahon), and Kelly Loeffler (wife of Jeff Sprecher, worth $1.1 billion), have also received offers of positions in the administration, though their attendance was not confirmed. Together with Adelson, Tilman Fertitta ($10.2 billion), and Todd Ricketts—whose father, J. Joe Ricketts, and family are estimated to be worth $4.2 billion—Zuckerberg co-hosted a pre-inaugural Ball reception for Trump.
Others either stayed out of the presidential contest or were Trump opponents before they attempted reconciliation, while some did back Trump's campaign. Before he fell in line after the election results, Trump allegedly vowed to put Zuckerberg in jail and had been banned from Instagram and Facebook by Zuckerberg's Meta. Since then, Zuckerberg has met with Trump at Mar-A-Lago, paid $1 million to his inauguration fund, changed the way its platforms verify content, and appointed Trump friend Dana White to Meta's board. Zuckerberg referred to Trump's response to his assassination attempt as "badass" in the run-up to the election, but he did not support any candidate.
Bezos and Trump have also had a history of disagreements. In 2019, Amazon accused Trump of losing a multibillion-dollar cloud computing contract with the Pentagon because of his "personal dislike" of Bezos, and Trump has been critical of the Washington Post, which Bezos owns. Bezos gave $1 million to the inaugural fund and stated that Trump "showed tremendous grace and courage under literal fire" during the assassination attempt, despite not endorsing him last year. He has always had the backing of others. Along with Adelson, the widow of billionaire Sheldon Adelson, the CEO of Las Vegas Sands, who gave $100 million to the pro-Trump super PAC Preserve America during the election, Musk is one of Trump's largest donors. The owner of Landry's restaurant chain and the Houston Rockets, Fertitta, has been nominated to be the U.S. ambassador to Italy.
Last year, Billionaires held a Trump fundraiser. Co-owner of the Chicago Cubs Ricketts has been a significant contributor to Republican political campaigns. Although he first gathered money for Trump's campaign within the party, he later led pro-Trump fundraising in 2020 and this year.
Over $170 million. According to estimates, Trump's first fund raised that amount, nearly tripling the $62 million raised by President Joe Biden four years prior and significantly surpassing the previous record of $107 million established by Trump's 2016 inauguration. According to reports, donors who contributed $1 million or raised $2 million from others received six tickets to several events in the days preceding the inauguration, such as a black-tie ball and a "candlelight dinner" with Trump and Melania Trump.