The property was the subject of a 2023 investigation by 'Wired,' which revealed treehouses, two mansions, a 5,000-square-foot bunker and extreme security measures

• Bernie Sanders says Elon Musk is using his wealth and political clout to undermine US democracy.
• Musk lambasted a government funding deal and said a shutdown would be the Democrats' fault.
• "Are Republicans beholden to the American people? Or President Musk?" Sanders asked on X.

Elon Musk is wielding his immense wealth and political power to pressure US lawmakers, shifting America from democracy to oligarchy, Sen. Bernie Sanders says.

In two recent X posts, the Vermont senator called out Musk's influence over Republicans and his warnings to legislators if they don't vote the way he wants.

"The US Congress this week came to an agreement to fund our government," he wrote late Wednesday. "Elon Musk, who became $200 BILLION richer since Trump was elected, objected. Are Republicans beholden to the American people? Or President Musk? This is oligarchy at work."

"Elon Musk, the richest man in the world, is threatening to unseat elected officials if they do not follow his orders to shut down the government during the holidays," he said in a Thursday post. "Are we still a democracy or have we already moved to oligarchy and authoritarianism?"

Musk blasted the funding bill in question as bloated and overcomplicated and wrote on X that "any member of the House or Senate who votes for this outrageous spending bill deserves to be voted out in 2 years!"

He threw his weight behind Republicans' alternative bill, hailing it as cleaner and simpler. Moreover, he posted that it would be the Democratic Party's fault if an agreement isn't reached and the government shuts down.

Both Trump's team and Musk have pushed back against the idea that he's pulling Republicans' strings. Musk has said he's only bringing things to the attention of his followers, and they're free to voice their support.

The Tesla and SpaceX CEO's net worth hit a record $486 billion on Tuesday, up $257 billion from the start of the year — a figure that exceeds the fortune of the world's second-richest man, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. Tesla stock has slid since then, but Musk was still worth $455 billion at Thursday's close.

As Sanders wrote, Musk's wealth surged after President Trump's election victory as Tesla stock rode a broader market rally, and investors wagered the automaker would benefit from Musk's close ties to the White House. Additionally, SpaceX was valued at a record $350 billion this month, boosting the worth of Musk's stake in the rocket company.

Sanders has called out Musk several times in his criticisms of wealth inequality, which often single out billionaires for having too much influence and paying too little in taxes.

"Never before in American history have so few billionaires, so few people had so much wealth and so much power," he said in a clip from "Meet the Press" that he recently shared on X.

"We can't go around the world saying, 'Oh well, you know in Russia, Putin has an oligarchy," Sanders continued. "Well, we've got an oligarchy here, too."

The progressive lawmaker has also clashed with Musk's Big Tech peers. Sanders recently told Bill Gates that he was a "very innovative guy" who deserved to be financially rewarded for his contributions to society as Microsoft's cofounder — but not to the tune of billions of dollars.

"How much do you deserve? Can you make it on a billion? Think you could feed the family? Probably. Pay the rent? Maybe," Sanders quipped.

In response to Sanders saying billionaires shouldn't exist in 2019, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, now the world's third-richest person, agreed that "some of the wealth that can be accumulated is unreasonable."

• The elite group worth more than $100 billion includes Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Bill Gates.
• The 16 members have grown almost $900 billion richer this year and are jointly worth $2.8 trillion.
• Walmart heirs Jim, Rob, and Alice Walton joined the club for the first time in September.

Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Mark Zuckerberg are among the handful of people on the planet with a net worth above $100 billion.

Members of this elite group have amassed 12-digit fortunes by owning huge amounts of stock in some of the world's most valuable companies. Most are founders and either current or former CEOs, and some, such as Warren Buffett, would be much richer if they didn't give billions to charity.

The 16 people in this very exclusive club have a combined wealth of about $2.8 trillion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. They're worth more than Amazon or Google owner Alphabet, which command market values of around $2.4 trillion each.

All but one of them have grown richer this year, adding a net $890 billion to their collective fortunes. Walmart ($762 billion), Eli Lilly ($740 billion), and JPMorgan ($675 billion) are all worth significantly less than that.

Walmart heirs Jim, Rob, and Alice Walton joined the exclusive group in September, thanks to their net worths surging by upward of $43 billion this year.

Here's the list of individuals worth at least $100 billion, showing Bloomberg's estimate on December 16, how much it's changed this calendar year, and the source of their wealth.

Meta’s microblogging platform, Threads, is growing at a quick clip since it was launched last year, and it seems to have benefited from the exodus of users from its rival, X, a couple months ago. The company’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg said on Monday that more than 100 million people use Threads daily, and that it […]

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• Mark Zuckerberg's Meta urged California to halt OpenAI's transition to a for-profit company.
• In doing so, Zuckerberg sided with his occasional nemesis, Elon Musk, who also wants to stop OpenAI.
• It seems the two tech billionaires have finally found some common ground.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and X owner Elon Musk have long-standing beef about everything from artificial intelligence to how they run their respective social media platforms.

While that feud has lasted for the better part of a decade — and has even threatened to get physical — the two tech billionaires now agree on at least one thing: their competitor, OpenAI, should remain a nonprofit.

Zuckerberg's Meta asked the California attorney general on Friday to stop OpenAI from becoming a for-profit company. Meta accused Sam Altman's company of "taking advantage" of its status as a nonprofit to raise billions.

"OpenAI wants to change its status while retaining all of the benefits that enabled it to reach the point it has today. That is wrong. OpenAI should not be allowed to flout the law by taking and reappropriating assets it built as a charity and using them for potentially enormous private gains," Meta said in the letter to California Attorney General Rob Bonta.

OpenAI is one of Meta's biggest competitors in the AI tech race.

"Failing to hold OpenAI accountable for its choice to form as a nonprofit could lead to a proliferation of similar startup ventures that are notionally charitable until they are potentially profitable," Meta wrote in the letter.

With that, Zuckerberg sided with Musk, who is engaged in an ongoing legal fight to prevent OpenAI from becoming a for-profit.

Musk, one of 11 OpenAI cofounders who split from the company early on, launched a second bid in November to stop OpenAI from making the transition, asking a court for an injunction against the company.

The injunction request also argues that OpenAI and Microsoft, the largest corporate investor in the AI startup, have worked together to build a "for-profit monopoly," engaging in anti-competitive behavior that also targets xAI, Musk's artificial intelligence venture.

OpenAI has fought back. On Friday, it published a blog post titled "Elon Musk wanted an OpenAI for-profit." The post includes a series of emails and messages between Musk and other cofounders, including Altman, going back as far as November 2015, a month before the company was founded.

In one of those emails, Musk responded to Altman's proposal to start a Delaware-based nonprofit: "Also, the structure doesn't seem optimal," Musk wrote.

Musk left the organization in 2018 in part because he believed OpenAI's "probability of success was 0," according to an OpenAI blog post from March. Musk has accused OpenAI of straying from its original mission to develop an artificial general intelligence that is safe and benefits humanity.

Almost a decade after its founding as a nonprofit, OpenAI is now eyeing the switch to a for-profit venture to generate more investor capital. In October, the company announced a $6.6 billion funding round, raising OpenAI's valuation to $157 billion. That investment, however, comes with a stipulation that OpenAI become a for-profit within two years.

Meanwhile, Meta said it plans to pour as much as $37 billion on infrastructure costs alone this year, largely related to AI. Musk's xAI told investors last month that it secured $5 billion in funding.

Musk and spokespeople for Meta and OpenAI did not respond to a request for comment.

• It's not new for rich people and big companies to donate to presidential inaugurations.
• Something about watching tech titans like Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos do it seems different.
• That's at least in part because it's so public — the money is less important than the message.

First, Mark Zuckerberg. Then, Jeff Bezos. Now, Sam Altman. They're all donating $1 million to Donald Trump's inauguration fund.

Expect more tech titans to follow. Google CEO Sundar Pichai was reportedly flying to Mar-a-Lago to meet with Trump this week. I wouldn't be shocked to see a $1 million pledge coming shortly after. (Google declined to comment about any of the above.)

You can see it playing out in real time. Zuckerberg's initial donation was news; each subsequent one just confirms it as the cost of doing business. At some point, the news will be when you hear that some tech giant is not forking over $1 million to help fund Trump's multiday party next month.

Quick context: It is not unusual for big companies and very rich people to donate lots of money to presidential inaugurations, whether via cash, in-kind contributions, or both.

While US elections themselves have (some) rules about the amount of money people and companies can spend on candidates, there's no cap on what they can spend on inaugural committees. The only restrictions are that the money can't come from foreign nationals and that the donations eventually have to be disclosed.

Which is why we can see it's also not unheard of for Big Tech companies to make inaugural donations. Microsoft kicked in $500,000 for Trump's first inauguration in 2017; Google spent $285,000. Those two companies also contributed to Joe Biden's 2021 inauguration, along with Uber, which spent $1 million.

It's also worth noting that the sums we are talking about here don't even qualify as rounding errors for companies this size. Zuckerberg's Meta makes about $174 million in profit every day. Amazon does about $110 million. A million bucks just doesn't register. (The Amazon and Meta donations are coming directly from the companies, not their founders; Altman, who has a reported net worth of $1.1 billion, has said he's making his donation personally.)

So what makes this round of donations newsworthy?

Yes, in some cases, Trump has tangled with the companies or the leaders in question — he famously threatened to jail Zuckerberg earlier this year for theoretical election interference, and he's long railed about Amazon's founder, Bezos, as well as the Bezos-owned Washington Post.

There's also the fact that while Trump and his allies continue to insist that they want to cut regulations, they also insist that they'll be cracking down on Big Tech. That context makes the donations seem even more transactional than other rich person/corporate donations.

But the main reason this is news is … because it's news. News that's out in public, that is.

In the past, these donations would eventually be disclosed in filings, but this time around, the contributors seem eager to let the world know they're doing it.

That's the telling part. The part that tells you that this time around, more tech leaders have decided that the best way to deal with Donald Trump is to say nice things about him in public, and to do nice things for him — in public. And then, they hope, they can get things from him privately.

That is, they are taking cues from Apple CEO Tim Cook, who navigated the first Trump presidency very effectively. As I've noted before: "Cook became an expert Trump manager during Trump 1.0 by letting the president do what he wanted in public, like take credit for things he didn't do, while prevailing on him privately to do things Cook wanted Trump to do — namely, exempting Apple products from tariffs." I'm assuming that will also include a $1 million donation from Apple that will get announced very shortly.

• Donald Trump is getting donations left and right from the biggest names in business.
• OpenAI CEO Sam Altman was the latest to give $1 million to Trump's inaugural fund.
• Tech leaders are angling to get or stay in his good graces and help shape his tech policy.

The latest business trend? Donating $1 million to Donald Trump's inauguration.

Business leaders across industries are trying to get on the president-elect's good side ahead of his return to the Oval Office, and some are breaking out their wallets — or their company's — to do so.

The president-elect is receiving donations to his inaugural fund from Mark Zuckerberg through Meta, Jeff Bezos through Amazon, and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.

Meta confirmed to BI earlier this week that it's donating $1 million to Trump's inaugural fund. Amazon told the Financial Times it's giving $1 million to the fund and will also air the inauguration on Prime Video.

OpenAI's Altman plans to kick in $1 million of his personal money to the inauguration fund, Fox News reported Friday, citing a source who works with Altman. Amazon and OpenAI did not immediately respond to requests for comment from BI.

Some of the tech leaders are trying to make peace with Trump after he repeatedly criticized them in his first four years at the White House and subsequently sued some of them. Trump has been vocal about wanting to go after Big Tech in his second term as well.

Trump's victory in November set off a chorus of CEOs publicly congratulating him — as well as taking phone calls with the president-elect and trips to Mar-a-Lago.

Trump told CNBC on Thursday that Bezos would visit him "next week" for a dinner, and The Information reported that Google CEO Sundar Pichai would also travel to meet with Trump. In its landmark antitrust case against Google, the Justice Department asked a judge to force Google to sell off Chrome, its web browser.

Zuckerberg and Trump shared dinner at Mar-a-Lago last month months after Trump had threatened to imprison Zuckerberg if reelected. Meta's president of global affairs, Nick Clegg, told reporters earlier this month that Zuckerberg "is very keen to play an active role" in Trump's tech policymaking.

Other big names in business watched Trump ring the opening bell at the New York Stock Exchange on Thursday, the same day he was named Time's Person of the Year.

Onlookers reportedly included Pershing Square CEO Bill Ackman, Citigroup CEO Jane Fraser, Target CEO Brian Cornell, Mastercard CEO Michael Miebach, Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon, and Verizon CEO Hans Vestberg.

• Mark Zuckerberg donated one of his gold chains to a charity auction organized by his sister.
• The anonymous winner bid $40,500 — but Aaron White was close with his $38,000 bid.
• The chain was gold-plated, not even solid gold.

How much would you pay to look like Mark Zuckerberg? For someone out there, the answer was: more than $40,000.

Zuckerberg donated one of his gold chains — specifically the one he wore at his well-photographed 40th birthday party — to a charity auction run by his sister.

While the auction website estimated the market value of the gold-plated (not even solid gold!) necklace at $425, the winning bid came in at $40,500.

The winner was an anonymous bidder whose username was simply "near." The runner-up went by the username "ElonRWA (Bureau of Internet Culture) (Crypto bros with infinite money)."

I know, I know.

The money went to Inflection Grants, an organization run by two Silicon Valley venture capitalists that gives small grants to young people. The auction ran as part of a charity poker tournament organized by Arielle Zuckerberg. Other auction items included 49ers tickets and a wine tasting with their father, Edward Zuckerberg.

I might not have been able to track down the anonymous winner or runner-up (I asked one of the charity's organizers whether their payment actually came through but didn't hear back), but I did get hold of the person who came in third in the bidding for Zuck's necklace. He's a real person — a real person who is incredibly sad to be missing out on a chain once worn by a man who wore his own name in a Latin idiom on a T-shirt to a company event.

Aaron White, the founder of AppyPeople, an AI startup, bid $38,000 on the necklace. Almost enough to win, but he lost out at the last second.

But … why bid?

"Zuck, at this point, is a historical business figure by any measure," he told Business Insider. "So it's a tiny, tiny slice of some form of American history."

White was willing to make such a large offer because he approved of the charity's mission. "It's for a good cause, showing people who want to build ... they can! And they can have an impact!" he wrote. "I donate money to similar causes — this is another way to do that but also get that little tiny history slice in the process."

Tragically, White could've bid more — his absolute ceiling was $45,000 — but he didn't want to go all in all at once. And then he ran out of time after the anonymous $40,500 bidder swooped in at the last second.

White has a shared history with Zuckerberg: They both attended Phillips Exeter Academy for high school. White was a few grades older, and while they didn't overlap, White said they had friends in common — and said Zuckerberg joined the same computer club that White had been president of during his time at the school.

Of course, the question is: If you owned Mark Zuckerberg's used gold chain, would you actually wear it?

"One-hundred percent yes — I would've worn it in all my video content/Zooms and around town," White said. "I live in Miami, no one would even notice."

• Amazon plans to donate $1 million to Trump's inauguration, the same amount as Meta, per reports.
• The moves show Big Tech's effort to mend relations with Trump, who has been critical of the industry.
• Trump said Thursday he wanted to "get ideas" from Big Tech leaders coming to visit him in Mar-a-Lago.

First Meta, now Amazon — Jeff Bezos' company will also reportedly donate $1 million to Donald Trump's inauguration.

The Wall Street Journal reported Amazon would donate the same amount as Mark Zuckerberg's Meta, the latest sign that Big Tech and the president-elect are reconciling.

Trump also told CNBC Thursday that Bezos would visit him "next week," and The Information reported Thursday that Google CEO Sundar Pichai would also travel to meet him.

It comes after Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg visited Trump at the president-elect's Mar-a-Lago resort for Thanksgiving Eve dinner last month.

″Mark Zuckerberg's been over to see me, and I can tell you, Elon is another and Jeff Bezos is coming up next week, and I want to get ideas from them," Trump told CNBC's Jim Cramer on Thursday.

Spokespeople for Amazon and Trump did not respond to requests for comment.

Meta confirmed to the Journal Wednesday its $1 million donation to the president-elect's inaugural fund. Amazon confirmed its donation to the Financial Times.

The meetings and donations point to a shift in the relationship between tech leaders and Trump, who had previously been critical of them. Trump has previously accused Zuckerberg and Bezos of bias against his administration, among other criticisms.

In previous years, Bezos and Trump have clashed. During his first campaign and term, Trump would take shots at Amazon, once stating that the company was doing "great damage to tax-paying retailers."

Bezos has previously criticized Trump's inflammatory rhetoric, including the president-elect's call at the time to imprison Hilary Clinton.

As Trump took office in 2017, Amazon donated about $58,000 to Trump's inauguration — much less than what other tech companies donated at the time, according to the Journal.

Zuckerberg has criticized Trump's violent remarks on Facebook. In 2021, the social media platform took the extraordinary step of deplatforming Trump after he praised January 6 rioters.

Both tech leaders have appeared to warm up to Trump in recent months.

The Amazon tycoon said at The New York Times' DealBook Summit last week that he's "actually very optimistic" about a second Trump term, saying that Trump has likely "grown in the last eight years" and that he was encouraged by the president-elect's focus on deregulation.

"He seems to have a lot of energy around reducing regulation. If I can help do that, I'm going to help him," Bezos said.

Zuckerberg also appears to be mending his relationship with the president-elect, despite Trump threatening to throw the Meta CEO in prison as recently as July.

After the first assassination attempt against Trump, Zuckerberg called the president-elect a "badass" but stopped short of endorsing him during a Bloomberg interview.

On November 6, Zuckerberg was among the CEOs congratulating Trump's election victory.

"Looking forward to working with you and your administration," Zuckerberg wrote in a Threads post.

Zuckerberg also presented Trump with a pair of Meta Ray-Bans.

Meta’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg is pulling off a lobbying-public relations combo move by gifting President-elect Donald Trump’s inaugural fund $1 million, according to The Wall Street Journal. The money came from Meta, to be clear, but Zuckerberg sweetened the gift further — while doing great marketing — by sending Trump a pair of Meta’s smart […]

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• Elon Musk is almost $200 billion richer than Jeff Bezos and worth more than Costco.
• His net worth hit $447 billion after Tesla stock jumped and SpaceX's valuation rose to $350 billion.
• Just five years ago, Musk was worth about $25 billion, and Tesla was valued below $100 billion.

Elon Musk is nearly $200 billion richer than Jeff Bezos, and personally worth more than Costco, after adding $63 billion to his fortune in a single day.

His net worth surged to $447 billion on Wednesday, per the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, after Tesla stock jumped 6% and SpaceX's valuation leaped to $350 billion based on employee share sales.

Musk's fortune has ballooned by $218 billion this year — a sum that exceeds the net worth of every other person on the rich list except Amazon's Bezos ($249 billion) and Meta's Mark Zuckerberg ($224 billion).

Musk is now more than twice as wealthy as Oracle's Larry Ellison ($198 billion), and more than three times as rich as Warren Buffett ($144 billion).

His one-day gain — the largest in the index's history — rivals the total wealth of Binance cofounder Changpeng Zhao, ranked 23rd with a $63.2 billion fortune. It also helped to lift the combined wealth of the 500 richest people on the planet to above $10 trillion for the first time, Bloomberg said.

Musk is now worth more on paper than the vast majority of US public companies, including Costco ($442 billion), Home Depot ($419 billion), and Netflix ($400 billion).

His wealth is largely made up of his roughly 13% stake and some contested stock options in Tesla, and his 42% slice of SpaceX. Musk's other businesses include xAI, Neuralink, The Boring Company, and X Corp, formerly Twitter.

Tesla shares have surged more than 70% this year to $425 at Wednesday's close, valuing the company at nearly $1.4 trillion. That figure comfortably exceeds the roughly $1 trillion market value of Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway and approaches the $1.6 trillion value of Zuckerberg's Meta.

The electric vehicle maker's shares have soared as investors bet it will harness artificial intelligence in revolutionary products such as self-driving cars and humanoid robots.

Musk's prominent role in Donald Trump's campaign, and his emergence as a close advisor to the president-elect who's tasked him with streamlining the US government, have also fueled optimism around his companies.

SpaceX is now valued at $350 billion based on the latest price paid by the company and its backers to buy shares from employees, Bloomberg reported Wednesday. The Starlink owner's valuation was previously $210 billion after a secondary share sale in June.

It's worth underscoring how dramatic Musk's wealth jump has been. He was worth less than $170 billion as recently as April, and only about $25 billion five years ago — around 1/18 of his net worth now.

Tesla was worth less than $100 billion during the Covid crash of 2020, or about 1/14 of its valuation today.

Meta has announced the newest addition to its Llama family of generative AI models: Llama 3.3 70B. In a post on X, Ahmad Al-Dahle, VP of generative AI at Meta, said that the text-only Llama 3.3 70B delivers the performance of Meta’s largest Llama model, Llama 3.1 405B, at lower cost. “By leveraging the latest […]

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• Meta's Nick Clegg said Elon Musk could try to become a "political puppet master" in Trump's administration.
• Musk will jointly lead the new Department of Government Efficiency and has become a close Trump advisor.
• Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg wants an "active role" in conversations about technology and AI, Clegg said.

Elon Musk could try to become a "political puppet master" during the second Trump presidency, Meta's global affairs chief said.

Nick Clegg, a former UK deputy prime minister who is now one of Mark Zuckerberg's key lieutenants at Meta and has played a key role in the company's censorship policies, made the comments on the BBC News podcast "Political Thinking."

Asked if Musk was "a threat to democracy," Clegg said that the X owner is "obviously now playing an outsize role in both the election and now the formation of the new US administration."

Musk could either choose to be an "avid and well-heeled supporter" of the president-elect, or a "political puppet master, going well beyond Trump, deciding who the next Republican candidate should be and the one after that," Clegg said.

The latter path would be "quite different to the general tradition of American democracy," he said.

After donating tens of millions to the Trump campaign and making several star appearances at rallies, Musk has cemented his role as a close advisor to the president-elect. The SpaceX founder was announced as the co-leader of a newly created Department of Government Efficiency, known as DOGE.

The close relationship has raised concerns about potential conflicts of interest, the level of influence Musk could have on politics, and how his multiple businesses might benefit.

Earlier this week, Clegg said that Zuckerberg — Meta's CEO and longtime Musk rival — is seeking a more prominent role in political conversations.

"Mark is very keen to play an active role in the debates that any administration needs to have about maintaining America's leadership in the technological sphere" and "particularly the pivotal role that AI will play," Clegg said.

Having greater involvement in government debates would also bring Zuckerberg closer together with Musk and Trump.

Musk's libertarian stance on censorship and social media has put him at odds with Zuckerberg. The two billionaires have also disagreed over open-source AI models and SpaceX, and even challenged each other to a cage fight.

Trump has also been a critic of Zuckerberg, particularly following the Meta CEO's decision to indefinitely suspend the then president from Facebook following the January 6 Capitol insurrection. Trump previously threatened to imprison Zuckerberg if he won the 2024 election.

Zuckerberg was quick to congratulate Trump following his election victory, and in November, the two had a Thanksgiving eve dinner at the president-elect's Mar-a-Lago resort.

• With his presidency approaching, tech leaders are seeking Donald Trump's good graces.
• Mark Zuckerberg dined with him at Mar-a-Lago. TikTok's Shou Chew is reportedly chatting with Elon Musk.
• From AI regulation to antitrust suits, there is a lot at stake.

From threatening to jail Meta chief Mark Zuckerberg to accusing Google of rigging search results against him, President-elect Donald Trump tangled with Big Tech throughout his 2024 presidential campaign.

But with victory clenched — and tech luminary Elon Musk emerging as a key confidant — leaders throughout the industry have sought meetings and phone calls with the president-elect and those in his orbit in recent weeks.

There's a lot at stake. Trump's presidency could affect everything from budding AI regulation to a bevy of antitrust actions that target Apple, Google, Meta, and Amazon.

"President Trump is surrounding himself with industry leaders like Elon Musk as he works to restore innovation, reduce regulation, and celebrate free speech in his second term," Trump-Vance transition spokesperson Brian Hughes told Business Insider in a statement.

With his second term approaching, these are some of the big-name tech executives who've been seeking the president-elect's ear.

• Mark Zuckerberg and President-elect Donald Trump have had a rocky relationship.
• Still, a Meta exec said Zuckerberg was "keen to play an active role" in tech-policy conversations.
• The exec didn't say what the two discussed at a dinner but described talks as "fairly high level."

Elon Musk already has Donald Trump's ear on policy discussions — and it sounds like Mark Zuckerberg wants in on that too.

"Mark is very keen to play an active role in the debates that any administration needs to have about maintaining America's leadership in the technological sphere" and "particularly the pivotal role that AI will play," Meta's president of global affairs, Nick Clegg, told journalists during a call on Monday, The Verge reported.

Zuckerberg and Trump have sparred before. But they've been in contact recently, meeting for dinner last week at Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate.

Clegg declined to share details of their talks but said that "the conversations at this stage are clearly fairly high level."

Zuckerberg and Trump met on several occasions during Trump's presidency. Trump has been highly critical of Facebook and Zuckerberg over the years, going so far as to say he'd jail Zuckerberg if reelected.

Facebook suspended Trump's account in 2021 over his comments during the Capitol riot; Zuckerberg said at the time that "the risks of allowing the President to continue to use our service during this period are simply too great." Two years later, the company reinstated Trump's Facebook and Instagram accounts.

Unlike Musk, Zuckerberg didn't endorse a presidential candidate this year. In an interview, the Meta CEO said Trump's reaction to being shot at a Pennsylvania rally this summer was "badass."

In his call with reporters, Clegg also discussed Meta's moderation efforts — over which the social-media company has faced criticism from both sides of the aisle — saying the company "overdid it a bit" during the COVID-19 pandemic.

"We know that when enforcing our policies, our error rates are still too high, which gets in the way of the free expression that we set out to enable," he said. "Too often harmless content gets taken down or restricted and too many people get penalized unfairly."

President-elect Trump says he had a "very productive meeting" with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau at his Mar-a-Lago club in West Palm Beach, Florida, on Friday. 

Trudeau jetted into Mar-a-Lago unannounced on Friday just days after Trump threatened to impose sweeping tariffs on Canadian products. Trump is threatening to impose 25% tariffs on Canada and Mexico over failures by both nations to curb the flow of illegal immigrants and illicit drugs from those countries into the U.S. 

"We discussed many important topics that will require both countries to work together to address, like the fentanyl and drug crisis that has decimated so many lives as a result of illegal immigration, fair trade deals that do not jeopardize American workers and the massive trade deficit the U.S. has with Canada," Trump wrote on Truth Social Saturday.

MUSK, STALLONE AMONG STAR-STUDDED NAMES PARTYING AT TRUMP'S MAR-A-LAGO CLUB FOR THANKSGIVING

"I made it very clear that the United States will no longer sit idly by as our citizens become victims to the scourge of this drug epidemic, caused mainly by the drug cartels, and fentanyl pouring in from China. Too much death and hardship!"

Trump wrote that Trudeau, who has been serving as prime minister of Canada since 2015, made a commitment to work with the U.S. to "end this terrible devastation of U.S. families."

U.S. customs agents seized 43 pounds of fentanyl at the Canadian border last fiscal year, compared with 21,100 pounds at the Mexican border. On immigration, Border Patrol made 56,530 arrests at the Mexican border in October alone and 23,721 arrests at the Canadian border between October 2023 and September 2024 — and Canadian officials say they are ready to make new investments in border security.

MEXICAN PRESIDENT MIGHT BE CHANGING VIEW ON US AS TRUMP WIN SENDS WARNING TO RULING SOCIALISTS 

Trump said the pair also spoke about many other important topics, including energy, trade and the Arctic, although he did not go into further detail. 

"All are vital issues that I will be addressing on my first days back in office, and before," Trump concluded, without saying whether tariffs were still on or off the table. 

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum, after speaking with Trump on the telephone, said Thursday she was confident a tariff war with Washington would be averted.

Sen.-elect Dave McCormick, R-Pa., posted a picture to X late Friday showing him at a Mar-a-Lago dinner table along with President-elect Trump, Trudeau, and Cantor Fitzgerald CEO Howard Lutnick, among others. The ritzy club has been a hive of activity since President-elect Trump’s historic election win over Vice President Harris earlier this month as the 45th president co-ordinates his transition back to the Oval Office. 

Tech billionaires Elon Musk and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg have also met Trump at the famous location, along with many of those nominated for top roles in the incoming administration. Trump selected Musk to lead an outside advisory panel known as the "Department of Government Efficiency" to slash waste in the federal government.

As he was leaving his West Palm Beach hotel, Trudeau stopped briefly to answer a reporter’s question about the dinner meeting, saying it had been "an excellent conversation."

An official who was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly and spoke to the Associated Press on condition of anonymity, said it had been a "positive, wide-ranging dinner that lasted three hours." 

The official said other topics included defense, Ukraine, NATO, China, the Middle East and pipelines, as well as the Group of Seven meeting in Canada next year.

Fox News’ Louis Casiano and The Associated Press contributed to this report. 

• Disney CEO Bob Iger says diet and exercise are critical to doing his job well.
• Iger said he wakes up early and works out because it gets his mind and body ready for the day ahead.
• He said that exercising gives him energy and helps him to motivate others.

Disney may be known for its magic, but there's nothing mystical about one of CEO Bob Iger's tips for excelling as a leader: diet and exercise.

Iger, 73, wakes up early and works out for about an hour "for sanity and vanity purposes," he told a recent episode of the "In Good Company" podcast.

Exercising clears his head and prepares him for the day ahead, Iger said. "Staying in shape, having stamina is critical for me, and that's eating well and exercising and just taking care of my body and my mind. I could not do this job if I were not in some form of physical and mental health."

Disney is one of the biggest US companies with $90 billion-plus in annual revenues and a market value north of $200 billion.

Iger first served as CEO between 2005 and 2020, spearheading the acquisitions of Pixar, Marvel, Lucasfilm, and 21st Century Fox's entertainment assets. He returned to lead the company in late 2022.

He's widely credited with turning Disney into a hitmaking machine that monetizes successes like "Frozen" across movies, TV shows, theme parks, resorts, cruises, toys, clothes, and video games.

Iger, who is known to rise at 4.15 a.m., said that getting up early vitalizes him and "a great leader has to be an energetic leader."

The Disney chief emphasized he's not a machine and doesn't always come bouncing into the office.

"Look, I'm a human being, so if I'm really tired from global travel and long hours and who knows what, I'm not afraid to show that to my people, because I think that's a way of being relatable," he said. "They feel that too — it's human nature. Sometimes you feel overworked and tired."

But Iger said that "for the most part, you've got to bring your energy to your job every moment of the day, meaning every waking hour, because it's motivating," he said. "Energy is motivating."

Iger is far from the only CEO to prioritize health and fitness. Apple's Tim Cook also wakes before dawn to work out for an hour most days, while Meta's Mark Zuckerberg has taken up martial arts in recent years.

On the other hand, Warren Buffett, the 94-year-old CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, famously enjoys Coca-Cola, McDonald's, and other junk food.

• Peter Thiel, tech billionaire and conservative kingmaker, has amassed influence all over Washington.
• He's close to powerful elected and un-elected political players, like JD Vance and Vivek Ramaswamy.
• Palantir, a company Thiel co-founded, counts the US government as its biggest client.

In August 2021, a mystery buyer purchased a 10,000-square-foot home in Washington, DC. They made the $13 million purchase through Salona Village Holdings LLC, shielding their identity.

That mystery buyer was billionaire Peter Thiel, whose sprawling influence in Washington has grown in recent years. Between mentoring Vice President-elect JD Vance since his time at Yale Law School to running companies with millions in government contracts, Thiel has entrenched himself in the DC world in ways both seen and subtle.

Worth $14.8 billion according to the Bloomberg Billionaire Index, the 57-year-old PayPal confounder was one of the first Silicon Valley leaders to espouse conservative views.

Here's a guide to his influence in Washington, which stretches far beyond the walls of his mansion.

A representative for Thiel did not respond to Business Insider's request for comment.

• CEOs are often known for their unique morning routines for optimizing productivity.
• These routines include activities like meditation and early wake-up times.
• One CEO said he likes to spend two hours reading newspapers after he wakes up.

When your daily work schedule involves running a company, starting off your morning right is crucial for many leaders.

From hour-long meditations to 4 a.m. waking times, we examined the morning routines of the CEOs of some of the world's biggest businesses.