Tech giants could benefit from Trump’s second term

“Wishing Donald Trump all success in leading and uniting the America we all love.” Jeff Bezos swiftly and warmly congratulated the new American president, the very day after his election on Tuesday, November 5. The Amazon founder is far from the only CEO of a digital giant to have zealously made such an act of goodwill toward Donald Trump: Sundar Pichai of Google, Tim Cook of Apple, Satya Nadella of Microsoft and Sam Altman of OpenAI have proclaimed they “look forward to engaging” with the new administration to foster “innovation” and strengthen American “leadership.”

This is in stark contrast to 2016, when the Republican loose cannon’s first election shook up traditionally Democratic Silicon Valley companies – their leaders were reluctant to attend the first invitation from the White House. In particular, one of their lobby groups opposed Trump’s plan to challenge visas for foreign workers, which are commonplace in these tech companies.

If the major American digital multinationals have changed their tone, it’s out of caution and pragmatism, as they have now experienced Trump’s first term of office. That term had marked a break, with a clear cooling in relations between the White House and Silicon Valley, previously cajoled by the Obama administration. But, beyond this first aspect, tech giants paradoxically have good reason to hope to benefit from a “Trump 2” term.

The ‘new golden age’ to usher in

For example, Donald Trump has promised to strongly support the development of artificial intelligence (AI), a technology that has become central to the sector since the emergence of the chatbot ChatGPT in late 2022. “He said to us: ‘AI is very scary, but we absolutely have to win, because if we don’t win, China will win,'” venture capitalists Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz explained about the future president in a July podcast.

AI is part of the “new golden age” to usher in, Trump said at the Republican National Convention in July. “AI needs literally twice the electricity that’s available now in our country. Can you imagine?” he said, accordingly calling for the need to “produce massive amounts of energy.” It’s a message that’s sure to strike a chord with all the AI heavyweights now seeking to power their greedy data centers with nuclear reactors, like Amazon, which has just seen a US authority limit the power of one of its projects.

Trump also seems to be in favor of deregulating AI: The Republican Party’s platform thus promised to “repeal Joe Biden’s dangerous Executive Order that hinders AI Innovation, and imposes Radical Leftwing ideas on the development of this technology.”

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