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Trump’s Silicon Valley dinner club: Everyone’s invited except his former BFF

There they were, every tech titan you could think of. Except for the richest one of all. Sad.

President Donald Trump and Mark Zuckerberg appear to have enjoyed their time together. | Source: Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images

Trump hosted a who’s who of Silicon Valley on Thursday at the White House, including Sam Altman, Mark Zuckerberg, Sergey Brin, Safra Catz, Bill Gates, and Tim Cook. 

Notably missing: Elon Musk.

The dinner came after tech leaders met as part of the White House’s new Artificial Intelligence Education task force, chaired by first lady Melania Trump. It was the group’s second meeting since Trump signed an executive order in April seeking to implement AI into children’s education.

The gathering is the latest example of the tech industry flattering Trump to stay in his good graces. Tech leaders’ remarks hinted at what they hope to get — or continue to get — in exchange for sucking up to the president.

Microsoft Co-Founder Bill Gates speaks during dinner. | Source: Alex Wong/Getty Images

Google CEO Sundar Pichai listens in the State Dining Room of the White House. | Source: Alex Wong/Getty Images

One person who was conspicuously absent from the gathering was Elon Musk. | Source: Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images

During opening remarks at the dinner table, Trump reciprocated the flattery, saying his assembled guests were “leading a revolution in business” in developing artificial intelligence. 

“This is taking our country to a new level. We’re leading the world,” Trump said. “We’re leading it because of the people around the table.”

Tech leaders in turn dished praise on the Donald, frequently pointing to his administration’s loosening of regulations, which is allowing them to more easily build massive data centers for their resource-hungry AI projects.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman thanked Trump for being a “pro-business, pro-innovation president” and called the task force meeting “wonderful.”

“Thank you so much for enabling this. We will invest a ton in the United States,” Altman said.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg thanked Trump for hosting the dinner before gushing to the rest of the bigwigs at the long, flower-laden table.

“I think all of the companies here are making huge investments in the country to build out data centers and infrastructure to power the next wave of innovation,” he said.

David Scahs, Mark Zuckerberg, Donald Trump and Melania Trump break into smiles. | Source: Alex Wong/Getty Images

It’s hardly the first time Zuckerberg has cozied up to Trump, or the most blatant one. 

Zuckerberg attended the president’s inauguration in January, and in the following months, he and his wife dramatically reshaped their namesake philanthropy. That included gutting internal diversity, equity, and inclusion teams; reportedly pulling funding for a school for low-income children in East Palo Alto; and declaring an end to all of its advocacy work, in an apparent move to appeal to Trump.

Several tech CEOs were notably absent from the meeting, including the world’s richest man, Musk, and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. 

Musk’s absence was no surprise, given his nasty, public falling out with Trump over the president’s signature “big beautiful bill.” Musk had derided the spending and tax cut package in an X post as “utterly insane and destructive” days before its passage in July. Musk is hardly alone in his criticism of the law, recent polling shows.

Here’s the rest of the dinner guest list, per CBS senior White House reporter Jennifer Jacobs.