Assessing RSVPs to Trump's Tech Summit

(TNS) — It’s no secret that Silicon Valley was largely in the Clinton camp during the campaign. With a few notable exceptions — calling Peter Thiel! — most of the tech industry’s heavy hitters were clearly hoping Clinton would win. There was talk of Apple CEO Tim Cook and Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates being considered for Hillary’s veep. And some tech icons were loudly anti-Trump, including the nearly 150 technology executives like Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, Twitter co-founder Ev Williams and eBay Inc. founder Pierre Omidyar who penned an open letter to Trump saying he’d be a “disaster for innovation.”

But that was then. And this is now. And on Wednesday, Trump will host a summit at his Trump Tower in New York City with a Who’s Who of the tech world.

The guessing game about who’ll attend is now in overdrive, with everyone from Politico to Bloomberg to the Wall Street Journal suggesting who’s in, who’s out, and who’s on the fence. Quoting “numerous sources with knowledge of the situation,” Recode says Cook, Alphabet CEO Larry Page and Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg will be among the fewer than a dozen invitees.

And numerous press reports say we can expect to see Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and the top dogs at Cisco, IBM and Intel, along with Safra Catz, the Oracle CEO who met recently with Trump after the president-elect asked her to drop by and chat.

In a statement, Catz, who has donated to politicians from both major parties, said the tech world and Trump have a lot of business to attend to.

“I plan to tell the President-elect that we are with him and will help in any way we can,” she said. “If he can reform the tax code, reduce regulation and negotiate better trade deals, the U.S. technology industry will be stronger and more competitive than ever.”

Recode reported that the invite for the powwow came from Trump’s chief of staff Reince Priebus, along with his son-in-law and chief adviser Jared Kushner and Peter Thiel, the PayPal co-founder and super Valley investor who has been Trump’s biggest supporter in the tech world and is helping with his transition team.

So if you’re curious about the guest list for Trump’s big talk-fest, here’s your scorecard:

YES

• Apple CEO Tim Cook
• Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg
• Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella
• Alphabet CEO Larry Page
• Alphabet chairman Eric Schmidt
• Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins
• Intel CEO Brian Krzanich

NO

• Uber CEO Travis Kalanick (invited, according to Record, but unavailable)
• Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky (ditto)
• Netflix CEO Reed Hastings
• Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff
• Slack CEO Stewart Butterfield
• Dropbox CEO Drew Houston
• VC king Marc Andreessen (not a big fan of Trump and his anti-Muslim rants: “The Valley wouldn’t be here, we wouldn’t be doing any of this if we didn’t have the amazing flow of immigrants that we’ve had in the last 80 years. And the idea of choking that off just makes me sick to my stomach.”)
• PayPal co-founder Max Levchin
• LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman (big Trump detractor)
• Hewlett-Packard CEO Meg Whitman (big Hillary supporter)

UNCLEAR

• Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos
• Tesla CEO Elon Musk (reports have him both going and not going)

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