Top CEOs and their companies are pledging to donate millions of dollars to President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration committee to side with him and make progress before he takes office.

Some of the planned donations reportedly include $1 million each from Jeff Bezos’ AmazonOpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Facebook parent company Metaled by Mark Zuckerberg. Others include $2 million from Robinhood Markets and $1 million each from both Above and its CEO, Dara Khosrowshahi.

ford The company is reportedly pairing its own $1 million donation with a fleet of vehicles.

Hedge fund manager Ken Griffin also said he plans to donate $1 million to the tax-exempt inaugural committee, Bloomberg reported. More donations from financial leaders are reportedly in the pipeline.

Bolstered by a decisive election victory, Trump has vowed to reshape U.S. economic policy in ways that could have delivered outsized benefits to some favored industries, such as fossil fuels.

At the same time, he has made clear the personal and political value he places on face-to-face meetings and public praise from CEOs of the world’s largest companies.

“EVERYONE WANTS TO BE MY FRIEND!!!” Trump wrote Thursday in a post on Truth Social, the social media app he runs Technology company.

Many of these CEOs have already made or are planning to make trips to Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s resort in Palm Beach, Florida, and the de facto interim headquarters to gain influence and access to the new administration.

To that end, Trump’s inauguration committee represents a “unique opportunity,” Brendan Glavin, research director at the money in politics nonprofit OpenSecrets, said in an interview.

Inaugural committees, appointed by elected presidents, plan and finance most of the pomp and circumstance that traditionally accompany the transition of power from one administration to the next.

Although the money ultimately goes to a current political candidate, it does not have the same connotation as a donation to, for example, a super PAC, which can fund partisan political activities that could stoke controversy.

And unlike contributing directly to a candidate’s campaign, there are no limits on how much an individual—or a company, or a task force—can give to an inaugural committee.

Additionally, since Trump has already won the election, an inaugural contribution for a high-ranking executive poses no risk of supporting a losing candidate.

“It’s really a great opportunity for them to curry favor with the new administration,” Glavin said.

While it’s nothing new for corporations and power brokers to pour big money into charter committees, experts told CNBC that the Trump factor is changing the equation.

“It’s even worse now,” Glavin said. “None of these people don’t want to be Trump’s punching bag for four years.”

Trump’s inauguration committee and his transition team did not respond to requests for comment.

Trump’s 2017 inauguration committee raised about $107 million, by far the most in U.S. history. The previous record was set in 2009 at the first inauguration of Barack Obama, whose committee raised $53 million.

Trump’s second inauguration is on track to break that record, with pledged donations already exceeding the $150 million fundraising goal, ABC News reported.

By comparison, President Joe Biden’s inauguration committee raised nearly $62 million.

“One of the oldest sayings in Washington is: If you’re not at the table, you’re on the menu, and the price of admission for a seat at the table keeps going up,” said Michael Beckel, research director at Issue One, a policy reform advocacy group.

The increased funding for Trump’s second inaugural committee comes in part from tech giants, many of which have largely stayed away from supporting his first inauguration.

Aside from GoDaddy.com founder Robert Parsons, who donated $1 million, few other Big Tech executives donated to Trump’s 2017 committee.

Trump once openly clashed with some of them, including Zuckerberg and Bezos, who also owns the Washington Post, a frequent target of the president-elect’s ire.

This time that is not the case. As Trump promises to eliminate many federal regulations but continues to accuse Big Tech of stifling competition, industry leaders’ relationship with the White House may depend more on their relationship than ever before.

“I’m actually very optimistic,” Bezos said about a second Trump presidency in an interview at the New York Times’ DealBook conference on Dec. 4. “I am very confident. He seems to be putting a lot of energy into reducing regulation. And in my opinion, if I can help him with that, I will help him. Because we have too much regulation here.” Country.”

The comments followed a scandal at The Washington Post in October, when the newspaper reported that Bezos had decided not to publish his editorial team’s endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris over Trump. Bezos defended the newspaper’s decision to stop supporting presidential candidates in an editorial, but the reversal triggered an exodus of subscribers and led many employees to resign in protest.

Nowhere is Trump’s newfound friendliness toward the tech world more pronounced than in his blossoming relationship with Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, who spent more than $250 million to help Trump get elected.

Musk, the world’s richest person, appeared frequently at Trump’s side before and after his election victory and was reportedly involved in all aspects of Trump’s transition planning. He and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy have been appointed to lead an advisory group tasked with reducing government costs.

This could put OpenAI’s Altman, who is currently embroiled in a breach of contract lawsuit from Musk, in a difficult position.

In addition to his $1 million inaugural donation, Altman also effusively praised Trump earlier this month. “President Trump will lead our country into the age of AI, and I am committed to supporting his efforts to ensure America remains at the forefront,” he said.

Craig Holman, government affairs lobbyist for the progressive nonprofit Public Citizen, told CNBC that these figures are “very afraid that Donald Trump will retaliate against them.”

“So they throw money at him to ingratiate themselves,” Holman said.

Four days after the presidential election, Trump announced the formation of the Trump Vance Inaugural Committee, Inc., a 501(c)(4) nonprofit organization. It will be co-chaired by real estate investor Steve Witkoff and former Republican Sen. Kelly Loeffler of Georgia, who is also Trump’s pick to lead the Small Business Administration.

Reince Priebus, who was one of Trump’s White House chiefs of staff during his first term, said in an X post that he had been tapped to serve as the committee’s finance chairman.

Priebus also shared a screenshot of an invitation listing the names of other finance chairs. They include Miriam Adelson, the GOP megadonor who spent $100 million on a pro-Trump super PAC this year, and billionaire Trump donor Diane Hendricks.

Charter committees are required to publicly disclose the names of donors who give $200 or more. However, these documents must not be submitted until 90 days after the opening ceremony.

If the committee has a surplus after all the celebrations, it can be a challenge to figure out how much is left.

Trump’s inauguration in 2017 was a smaller affair than Obama’s in 2009, even though Trump had raised more than twice as much money for his inauguration as Obama. As a result, it was widely expected that Trump’s committee would have tens of millions of dollars left after paying for balls and hotels.

But years later, it was unclear what happened to much of that money.

Federal records show that about a quarter of all funds raised, $26 million, were paid to a newly formed company run by an adviser to first lady Melania Trump.

“We look at the history of inauguration funding and find that it comes from very large donors, wealthy special interests and corporations, almost all of which have business before the federal government,” said Public Citizen’s Holman.

He added: “This is a real dead end of buying advantages.”