 "5 Indian-origin CEOs, Elon Musk absent: Inside Trump’s dinner with powerful tech leaders")
US President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump hosted a select group of top tech executives for a dinner at the White House on Thursday.
Among those who attended were Apple’s Tim Cook, Microsoft’s Satya Nadella and Bill Gates, and Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg.
ALSO READ | Why Microsoft workers have taken over company’s main campus in Washington
But one well-known face was missing. Tesla CEO and SpaceX founder Elon Musk, once closely associated with Trump, was not present.
The dinner was meant to be the first event held in the newly renovated Rose Garden at the White House. Due to bad weather, officials shifted it to the State Dining Room instead.
In this explainer, we look at what happened at the event and why Musk was absent.
Let’s take a look:
Which tech leaders were present at the event?
Donald Trump hosted the grand dinner at the White House State Dining Room, bringing together leading figures from the biggest US technology firms.
VIDEO | Washington, DC: US President Donald Trump met top tech and business leaders at the White House, where discussions focused on artificial intelligence, innovation, and domestic investment.
— Press Trust of India (@PTI_News) September 5, 2025
CEOs, including Mark Zuckerberg, Tim Cook, Sundar Pichai, Satya Nadella, Bill Gates,… pic.twitter.com/3EuqP2u3P2
Here are the tech leaders who attended the event:
Mark Zuckerberg (Meta)
Bill Gates (Microsoft)
Tim Cook (Apple)
Sam Altman (OpenAI)
Satya Nadella (Microsoft)
Sundar Pichai (Google)
Sergey Brin (Google)
Safra Catz (Oracle)
David Limp (Blue Origin)
Sanjay Mehrotra (Micron Technology)
Greg Brockman (OpenAI)
Vivek Ranadive (Tibco Software)
Shyam Sankar (Palantir)
The group invited to the White House represented some of the biggest names in artificial intelligence. Zuckerberg sat beside the president, while Gates was next to First Lady Melania Trump.
The Indian-origin executives at the meeting were Sundar Pichai, Satya Nadella, Sanjay Mehrotra, Vivek Ranadive and Shyam Sankar.
‘How much money will you be investing?’
At the dinner, where Silicon Valley’s biggest names gathered, Trump asked each leader a direct question: how much are America’s largest technology firms investing in the country?
“This is taking our country to a new level,” he said from the middle of a long table as he spoke about artificial intelligence and pointed to the investments companies were making across the United States.
The executives praised Trump and shared their hopes for progress in technology, but the president focused on the figures.
He went around the table, asking each leader how much their company was investing in America.
Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, seated to Trump’s right, said $600 billion. Apple’s Tim Cook gave the same figure. Google’s Sundar Pichai said $250 billion.
.@Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg tells @POTUS his company will invest "at least $600 billion" in the U.S. over the next several years "to build out data centers and infrastructure to power the next wave of innovation." pic.twitter.com/0lxkQ845v6
— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) September 5, 2025
“$600 billion? Alright, that’s a lot of jobs. We’re very proud of that. That’s great. Thank you very much, appreciate it,” the US President told Cook.
The next question was directed at Google’s investment.
“We are well north of $100 billion. In the next two years, it will be $250 billion in the US,” Pichai said.
“That’s great, that’s great. We’re proud of you. Thank you. A lot of jobs, a lot of jobs. Yeah, good,” Trump said.
“What about Microsoft? That’s a big number.”
Microsoft’s Satya Nadella answered: “This year, in the United States, we are close to around $75 to $80 billion.”
“Good, very good. Thank you very much.”
Why Elon Musk was not present at the meeting
The absence of the world’s richest person at the dinner raised questions after his public split with Trump, when he left the administration, criticised the US President and his government over public spending and the Epstein files.
He promised to launch a new political party called the “America Party,” though that has not yet taken shape.
Musk posted on X that he had been invited but was unable to go.
I was invited, but unfortunately could not attend. A representative of mine will be there.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 4, 2025
“I was invited, but unfortunately could not attend. A representative of mine will be there.”
ALSO READ | $6 billion windfall: Is crypto now the Trump family’s biggest business venture?
Melania Trump’s ‘robots are here’ warning
First Lady Melania Trump warned on Thursday that “the robots are here” and said it is “our responsibility to prepare America’s children” for the AI-driven years ahead.
“Our future is no longer science fiction,” she said.
“During this primitive stage, it is our duty to treat AI as we would our own children – empowering, but with watchful guidance.”
The event, a meeting of a White House AI education task force set up earlier this year, was one of only a few public events for the first lady so far.
Much of her work in Trump’s second administration has centred on children, building on the “Be Best” campaign from his first term, which focused on well-being, cyberbullying and opioid abuse.
Apart from her current work on AI, she played a key role in driving forward the Take It Down Act, which made it a crime to post “intimate images,” whether real or AI-generated, online without the person’s consent.
Zuckerberg’s hot mic moment
Zuckerberg drew laughter when, caught on a hot mic, he told Trump, “Sorry, I wasn’t ready” after being questioned about free speech in Britain, according to CNN.
Trump joked: “This is the beginning of your political career.”
Zuckerberg quickly replied: “No it’s not.”
Trump on upcoming key jobs report
Asked if he trusted Friday’s upcoming Bureau of Labour Statistics jobs report, Trump said, “I don’t know,” before accusing past BLS leaders of political bias.
“The real numbers will come as tech companies invest in building infrastructure in America.”
He also downplayed current gains as being mainly linked to construction and promised that the US would soon see job growth “like our country has never seen before.”
Gates’ open praise for Trump on vaccines
Bill Gates openly praised Trump’s Covid-19 vaccine programme, calling it an example of fast medical innovation.
He said Microsoft was ready to support the US government in medical research and listed projects on HIV, polio and sickle cell.
Bill Gates, alongside President Trump and Melania, said he is in talks with Trump about vaccines and gene editing.
— Shadow of Ezra (@ShadowofEzra) September 4, 2025
He explained that the goal is to take American innovation to the next level, with hopes of curing and even eradicating most diseases.
Gates said his work will… pic.twitter.com/rubpYgOChe
“The president and I are talking about taking American innovation to the next level to cure and even eradicate some of these diseases,” Gates said.
His remarks came only hours after RFK Jr’s heated hearing on vaccine policy.
With inputs from agencies
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