Elon Musk Skips Trump’s Star-Studded White House Tech CEO Dinner
President Donald Trump is set to host an exclusive gathering of two dozen top tech and business leaders on Thursday evening in the newly renovated White House Rose Garden.
Among the high-profile invitees are Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg, Apple CEO Tim Cook, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, and OpenAI’s Sam Altman, according to a White House official.
Notably absent will be Tesla and SpaceX chief Elon Musk. Despite receiving an invitation, Musk announced on X that he will not be attending. “A representative of mine will be there,” he posted, citing scheduling conflicts. Musk had previously served briefly as a special government employee during Trump’s current term but later had a very public falling-out with the president.
The dinner follows a separate White House event on artificial intelligence hosted by First Lady Melania Trump earlier in the day. The meeting highlights Trump’s complex yet strategic ties with Silicon Valley, as many industry leaders increasingly look to align with the administration’s push on AI innovation, tech reshoring, and U.S. competitiveness.
Other confirmed invitees include OpenAI president Greg Brockman, Google co-founder Sergey Brin, Palantir CTO Shyam Sankar, and Alexandr Wang, co-founder of Scale AI and now head of a superintelligence team at Meta.
Top executives from across the tech spectrum—Google’s Sundar Pichai, Microsoft’s Satya Nadella, Oracle’s Safra Catz, and Blue Origin’s David Limp—are also on the list.
Venture capitalist David Sacks, who currently serves as the White House’s crypto and AI czar, is expected to attend, along with Shift4 founder Jared Isaacman, despite Trump recently withdrawing his nomination to lead NASA.
