Google has donated $1 million to President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration fund, making it the latest major tech company to chip in.
Karen Bhatia, the company’s global head of government affairs and public policy, told CNBC on Thursday that Google made its donation on Monday. YouTube — which is under the umbrella of Alphabet, the same parent company as Google — will also livestream the inauguration on Jan. 20, she noted.
“Google is pleased to support the 2025 inauguration,” Bhatia said.
With the donation, Google joins a number of other tech giants to pitch in $1 million to Trump’s inauguration. Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, made its donation last month and was soon followed by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, who both personally donated $1 million; Apple CEO Tim Cook followed suit and donated $1 million of his own money to the inauguration fund in January.
A Google spokesperson told CNBC it has donated to previous inauguration funds in the past, without specifying which ones, and has also provided livestreams to inaugurations in years past.
The relationship between Trump and Google seems to be fairly warm heading into his next term. Last October, Trump said Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai called to tell him that the few hours he spent working at McDonald’s on the campaign trail was the “biggest thing” Google had seen in years on search.
Google’s donation comes a few months after a federal judge in August ruled the company broke antitrust laws in order to maintain a monopoly on web searches. The industry-shaking ruling was followed by the U.S. Department of Justice urging a federal judge to break up Google last November, with regulators calling for the tech giant to sell its Chrome web browser in order to boost competition.
A hearing on the DOJ’s filing is set for April, and a decision is expected by mid-2025.
