As Donald Trump raises his right hand to take the oath of office on Monday, the world’s three richest men — Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg — will be there to witness it.
The trio, who hold sway over companies worth trillions of dollars, will be joined in a freezing Washington by the likes of Open AI’s Sam Altman alongside throngs of lesser-known chief executives and investors hoping to curry favour with the president-elect or make amends for their former criticism.
Their pilgrimages to the US capital come as Trump’s inaugural committee looks on course to have raised a record sum from corporate donors and wealthy elites. Although final figures will not be disclosed for months, the committee is expected to smash the $107mn record set by Trump in 2017, when corporations scrambled to get in with the then-political neophyte.