• Donald Trump addressed the scores of CEOs who have jockeyed to get private meetings.
• "Everybody wants to be my friend," Trump told reporters.
• Tim Cook, Sundar Pichai, and other top execs have met with Trump at Mar-a-Lago.

President-elect Donald Trump said on Monday that major tech CEOs want to meet with him ahead of his second term, showcasing how an industry that once spurned him is now supportive.

"One of the big differences between the first term, in the first term, everybody was fighting me," Trump told reporters during a news conference. "In this term, everybody wants to be my friend."

Big Tech executives like Apple CEO Tim Cook, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai have or are expected to visit Mar-a-Lago to meet with the president-elect. "I had dinner with, sort of, almost all of them, and the rest are coming," Trump said on Monday.

"I don't know, my personality changed or something," the president-elect added.

The series of meetings follows an election season that saw some major names in Silicon Valley embrace Trump, including, most notably, Elon Musk.

Trump has reciprocated the love, naming Musk to co-lead the newly created "Department of Government Efficiency" and tapping former PayPal executive David Sacks as his crypto and AI czar.

Some in the tech community have also announced their intentions to make $1 million donations to Trump's inaugural committee either by themselves or through their corporation.

Many in the business community, including tech, were skeptical of Trump's first term.

Some, including Musk, broke with Trump over his decision to stick by his campaign promise to withdraw the US from the Paris climate accord. Others, including CEOs from Intel, Merck, and Under Armour, resigned from White House advisory councils in the wake of Trump's response to white supremacist violence in Charlottesville, Virginia. Trump, however, continued to court CEOs. In 2019, his White House launched a new business-focused council that included the likes of Cook, along with top leaders from IBM and Walmart.

• 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.

• Apple's Tim Cook said his departure from Apple is coming up more often in conversations.
• Cook, who has been CEO since 2011, said, "It's a privilege of a lifetime to be here."
• He's previously said he'd like the next CEO to come from within Apple.

Apple CEO Tim Cook says his retirement is becoming a hotter topic as he gets older.

Cook, 64, has had the top job at Apple since 2011. For much of his tenure, he's been asked about his predecessor, the late Apple cofounder Steve Jobs, but there's been a shift to questions about who will succeed him as CEO.

During a Q&A session with Wired editor at large Steven Levy, Cook said he's being asked how much longer he'll be CEO "now more than I used to."

"It's a privilege of a lifetime to be here. And I'll do it until the voice in my head says, 'It's time,' and then I'll go and focus on what the next chapter looks like," he said.

Cook has worked at Apple since 1998. He's seen it through periods of uncertainty as well as big moments like the release of the iPhone and hitting a $3 trillion market cap. He told Levy his "life has been wrapped up in this company."

"It's the overwhelming majority of my adult life. And so I love it," Cook said.

Although Apple hasn't made any official declarations about Cook's retirement, several top Apple execs have been mentioned as possible successors.

John Ternus, senior vice president of hardware engineering at Apple, and chief operating officer Jeff Williams are potential frontrunners to take the helm, Bloomberg reported.

Company insiders reportedly told Bloomberg that Cook's retirement is at least three years off. When it does come, Cook previously said that he wants it to be an internal hire.

"I really want the person to come from within Apple," Cook told pop star Dua Lipa on an episode of her podcast "At Your Service" in November 2023.

As for what comes after his retirement, Cook told Levy it's ultimately "up to others to determine" Apple's legacy. He has his vision for what that will be.

"Apple will be remembered for delivering great products that changed the world, that really improved people's lives," he said.

• 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.

• 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.

Mark Zuckerberg

Like his fitness routine, there's a good chance Mark Zuckerberg's morning habits have evolved over time. But in an old Facebook Live Q&A, the Meta CEO said he wakes up at 8 a.m. and immediately checks Facebook, Facebook Messenger, and WhatsApp on his phone.

His social media browsing usually lasts only a few minutes, he said at the time, though it sometimes stretches out longer depending on the day.

"It's a pretty sad situation, to be honest," he said. "I have contacts, and I can't see very well. And before I put my contacts in, I often look to see what is going on Facebook."

Zuckerberg then usually follows up his screen time with gym time. Although he used to work out at least three times a week, usually running, he told Joe Rogan in 2022 that he didn't like how running gave him time to "think a lot."

Instead, he wanted to find something "that's both super engaging physically but also intellectually" where he is unable to focus on anything else.

"MMA is the perfect thing because if you stop paying attention for one second, you're going to end up on the bottom," Zuckerberg said.

The Facebook founder said on Lex Fridman's podcast in 2023 that he did three to four jiu-jitsu and MMA sessions weekly, along with strength and conditioning work and mobility training.

Tim Cook

The Apple CEO likes to start his morning as early as 4 a.m. to 5 a.m. and spends his first waking hour on emails.

Cook is "pretty religious" about reading a lot of emails from customers and employees, he said in a 2023 episode of "Dua Lipa: At Your Service."

"The customers are telling me things that they love about us or things that they want changed about us. Employees are giving me ideas," he said. "But it's a way to stay grounded in terms of what the community is feeling, and I love it."

Cook then said that he spends an hour at the gym, usually doing strength training.

"I've got somebody to really push me to do things I don't want to do, and I do no work during that period of time at all," he said. "I never check my phone."

Although it's unclear if he eats breakfast daily, he reportedly "dug into scrambled egg whites, sugar-free cereal, unsweetened almond milk, and bacon" during a 2017 interview with Andrew Ross Sorkin, a columnist at The New York Times.

Sam Altman

OpenAI's chief executive wrote in a 2018 blog post that the first few hours of the morning are his "most productive time of the day," so he makes sure to keep those periods free of meetings.

Altman said in the blog post that he rarely eats breakfast, instead opting for a big shot of espresso after waking up. As a result, he said he gets around 15 hours of fasting.

Evan Spiegel

Another early riser, the Snap CEO wakes up at 5 a.m. for some alone time, Spiegel said in a 2018 interview that appeared in the Entrepreneurship Handbook.

"I get up really early, because that's the only time that's 'Evan Time' for me, when people aren't really awake yet," he said. "I get a couple hours between 5 a.m. and 7 a.m. to do whatever I wanna do."

Earlier this year, Snap told Business Insider that Spiegel likes to check the app and his email after waking up and then drinks a double espresso. Then, he goes to the gym for 45 minutes or meditates.

Spiegel told Vogue Australia in 2022 that his wife, Australian model Miranda Kerr, got him "hooked on Kriya meditation," which he called "life-changing."

Kerr, founder of Kora Organics, has also reportedly put Spiegel on the brand's brand's turmeric brightening and exfoliating mask.

"He doesn't use it as an actual mask; he keeps it in the shower and uses it as an exfoliant," Kerr told New Beauty in 2019.

She added, "What he loves about it is that it has peppermint oil in it, so it's so invigorating. He says he can't be without it because it's his little boost of aromatherapy in the morning! It gives him energy!"

Jeff Bezos

The former Amazon CEO seems to have a slightly more relaxed start to his day and said he likes to "putter in the morning," Axios reported in 2018.

"So I like to read the newspaper," he said. "I like to have coffee. I like have breakfast with my kids before they go to school."

He and his fiancé, Lauren Sánchez, have a no-phone rule during the mornings and share a "magic moment" before the kids wake up, Sánchez told People.

The two also try to journal together, she said in 2023 interview with Vogue, though admits that they're "not quite there" yet and do it three times a week. They also enjoy coffee together, with Bezos drinking his morning brew in a self-heating Ember mug.

The billionaire then likes to get in some gym time almost every day. On a good day, Bezos said in a Lex Fridman podcast that he does 30 minutes of cardio and 45 minutes of weightlifting or some kind of resistance training.

"I have a trainer who you know I love who pushes me," Bezos said in the podcast. "Which is really helpful."

Bezos then sets his first meeting at 10 a.m. and said he likes to do his "high-IQ meetings" before noon, according to Axios.

"Like anything that's going to be really mentally challenging, that's a 10 o'clock meeting," he said. "And by 5 p.m., I'm like, 'I can't think about that today. Let's try this again tomorrow at 10 a.m.'"

Peter Warwick

The Scholastic CEO previously told BI that he wakes up between 5:30 a.m. and 6 a.m., drinks coffee, checks emails, and scans the news to start his day.

For world, political, and business news, Warwick turns to The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Financial Times. He also likes to keep up with the English Premier League as an Arsenal fan, so he'll check up on The Guardian, The London Times, and the Daily Telegraph to keep up with his team.

At 7 a.m., Warwick and his wife will do some "vigorous" walking or jobbing along The High Line or Hudson River Park — a ritual that the two have done nearly every morning for over a decade.

Warwick then leaves for work at 8:30 a.m., opting to walk 25 minutes to and from his office in SoHo, barring bad weather or late nights. By around 9 a.m., he gets an avocado toast and skinny latte from Cliffords, Scholastic HQ's rooftop café and coffee bar, to enjoy at his desk while going through emails.

Marc Benioff

The Salesforce CEO likes to start his day by meditating for 30 to 60 minutes to manage his stress.

A big fan of the wellness practice, Benioff has worked with monks and nuns from Plum Village in France, even hosting them at his home in 2015.

"I am very interested in keeping a clear head," he said in a 2005 interview with SFGate. "So I enjoy meditation, which I've been doing for over a decade — probably to help relieve the stress I was going through when I was working at Oracle."

He has extended his love of the practice to his employees by having meditation rooms on every floor at a Salesforce building in San Francisco, an idea he said was inspired by the Plum Village monks.

Peter Beck

CEO of space company Rocket Lab, Peter Beck, previously told BI that he starts his day between 4:30 and 5 a.m. in New Zealand by immediately going through emails.

He also completely forgoes breakfast and coffee.

"I can't drink coffee," Beck said. "It completely knocks me out and puts me to sleep."

But sometimes, his mornings can start hours before his already early schedule depending on his company's projects — which can have sporadic timing as a rocket business.

"The rocket launches when the rocket needs to launch," Beck said. "So if that's 2 a.m. in the morning, it's 2 a.m. in the morning."

Bob Iger

When the Disney CEO gets up at 4:15 a.m., he tries to avoid looking at his phone until after his morning exercise routine.

Iger said at a summit hosted by Vanity Fair in 2018 that he tries to exercise and think before he reads.

"Because if I read, it throws me off, it's distracting," he said. "I'm immediately thinking about usually someone else's thoughts instead of my own."

Iger added that he likes being alone with his own thoughts and said that it gives him "an opportunity to not just replenish but to organize, and it's important."

To further protect from distractions, Iger said he works out in a darkened room with the TV on mute, which he watches while his own music plays.

Jack Dorsey

Jack Dorsey, the cofounder of Block and X, formerly Twitter, used to wake up at around 5 a.m. and start his day with 30 minutes of meditation and then a series of seven-minute workouts, he said in a 2015 live chat.

Although he had built a very consistent routine during his time running Twitter, Dorsey said in a 2018 podcast interview with Ben Greenfield that he now wakes up at 6:15 a.m. and begins with an hour of meditation and then a cup of coffee.

"I'll say that my routine today is completely different than my routine three years ago but I feel like I have a lot of it dialed in based on what I'm currently experiencing in terms of stress and just what I have to do every day," Dorsey told Greenfield.

Jaimie Dimon

The JPMorgan CEO starts his morning at 5 a.m. and spends two hours reading five newspapers, analyst and internal bank reports, and even speech transcripts, The Wall Street Journal reported.

He then exercises for 45 minutes, doing aerobics, light weights, or stretches. Despite his voracious appetite for reading, Dimon said he tends not to be hungry in the morning.

• Apple CEO Tim Cook is visiting China for the third time this year.
• Cook attended discussions focused on supply chain and trade issues, per Bloomberg.
• China is one of Apple's largest producers and most important markets.

Apple CEO Tim Cook is visiting China for at least the third time this year as the tech giant prepares for president-elect Donald Trump's proposed import tariffs and the impact on global trade.

Cook joined more than 20 top executives on Monday for a roundtable discussion with Chinese Premier Li Qiang ahead of a five-day supply chain conference in Beijing, according to a Bloomberg report.

According to Bloomberg, the discussion was focused on supply chain and trade issues. It is the first high-level roundtable between a senior Beijing official and foreign companies since Trump won the US presidential election earlier this month.

Companies around the world are bracing for the president-elect's proposed tariff policies. Trump has said he would introduce a 60% tariff on Chinese goods and a levy of at least 10% on goods imported from every other country.

China is one of Apple's largest producers and most important international markets. Previous estimates have indicated that over 95% of its iPhones, AirPods, Macs, and iPads are made in China.

"I value them very highly. We could not do what we do without them," Cook said of Apple's partners in China in an interview on Monday posted by a social media account connected to China Central Television.

Apple has also been grappling with a sales slowdown in China over the past year as local rivals such as Huawei take more market share.

It has also faced pressure from the Chinese government as employees were told not to use iPhones at work. The government has previously denied these reports.

Cook has made at least three public appearances in China this year to show his commitment to the country. He was previously in Beijing last month to discuss increasing investment in China.

Apple did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

• Google pays Apple at least $20 billion a year to make its search engine the default on iPhones.
• Those payments were at the heart of a federal antitrust case Google lost earlier this year.
• Now, the government will ask a judge to ban those payments. But it's not a done deal.

Apple makes billions of dollars a year from Google. But a federal judge's ruling could make that money disappear.

That's because a long-running deal between Apple and Google, where Google pays Apple at least $20 billion a year to make Google the default search engine on iPhones, is at the heart of the US government's antitrust case against Google. And Google lost that case earlier this year when Judge Amit P. Mehta ruled that Google has an illegal monopoly in search.

On Wednesday, the US Department of Justice is expected to unveil a list of steps it wants Mehta to take to punish Google. Among the remedies the DOJ is asking for, per The Wall Street Journal: Forcing the company "to stop paying partners such as Apple billions of dollars a year to make Google's search engine the default on web browsers."

Which makes sense, since that was a big focus of the government's case. (Though, confusingly, an earlier Bloomberg report about the DOJ's plan focused on forcing Google to sell off its Chrome browser and never mentioned the Apple payments.)

In any case: If Google really is prevented from paying Apple, that could be meaningful for Apple's efforts to make money from services, which have become increasingly important to the company as iPhone sales flatten.

But even if that happens, it doesn't mean Apple automatically loses all the money Google pays it every year. It's possible that another provider, like Microsoft's Bing, could step in to make its own payments to Apple for the same prime real estate.

And while the DOJ's request, and Mehta's eventual ruling, are all important, they're not the end of the story. Google has said it will appeal the ruling. I asked Google and Apple for comment.

One more complexifier: How will the incoming Trump administration treat this case?

On the one hand: Trump's first administration filed the original antitrust complaint against Google, and there are lots of people in Trump's orbit who are upset with Big Tech.

On the other hand: Trump has a record of selective enforcement, and Apple CEO Tim Cook built a rapport with him during the first go-round — which helped Cook convince Trump to exempt Apple products from China tariffs. This one will take quite a bit of time to unspool.