NEW YORK— President-elect Donald Trump, who faced fierce opposition from some Silicon Valley leaders during the election campaign, strove to assure the titans of tech on Wednesday that his administration is “here to help you folks do well.”
Trump, still savoring his election victory, convened a summit at Trump Tower for nearly a dozen tech leaders, whose industry largely supported Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton. Many in the industry are worried that Trump will stifle innovation, curb the hiring of computer-savvy immigrants and infringe on consumers’ digital privacy.
He immediately tried to allay those fears.
“We want you to keep going with the incredible innovation. Anything we can do to help this go on, we will be there for you,” Trump said. “You‘ll call my people, you’ll call me. We have no formal chain of command around here.”
The CEOs who filled the table in Trump’s 25th floor conference room included Apple’s Tim Cook, Alphabet’s Larry Page, Google’s Eric Schmidt, Microsoft’s Satya Nadella, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, Tesla’s Elon Musk, IBM’s Ginni Rometty, Oracle’s Safra Catz and Cisco Systems’ Chuck Robbins. Facebook’s chief operating officer, Sheryl Sandberg, attended instead of its CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, who is one of many tech executives who have expressed misgivings about Trump’s pledge to deport millions of immigrants who are in the country illegally.
Reporters were allowed to witness only the first moments of the meeting. Bezos, who is also owner of The Washington Post, which has been a frequent target of Trump complaints about campaign coverage, said he was “super excited about the possibility of innovation,” a comment echoed by several other attendees.
