Tim Cook and Sheryl Sandberg Meet Up with Trump

By Xyla Joelle L. Fernandez

Dec 12, 2016 06:00 AM EST

Apple CEO Tim Cook, Alphabet CEO Larry Page, Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, and Intel CEO Brian Krzanich plan to attend, according to sources with knowledge of the situation.

They'll join Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins and Oracle co-CEO Safra Catz, who CNN Money previously reported would be attending. IBM CEO Ginni Rometty, who is part of Trump's newly established policy forum, will also attend.

Invitations to meet with Trump were signed by Trump's son-in-law and adviser Jared Kushner, chief of staff Reince Priebus, and billionaire tech investor Peter Thiel. Thiel, who broke from many other people in tech in supporting Trump early, has been a link between Trump and Silicon Valley.

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, whose platform Trump used feverishly to build support throughout his campaign, as well as Jeff Bezos. Trump targeted Bezos, founder of Amazon and owner of the Washington Post, after the Post's tough coverage of his presidential campaign.

The sit down with Trump does have the potential for devolving into a heated, uncomfortable exchange-similar to the president-elect's meeting with a number of top media executives. Throughout Trump's insurgent bid for the White House, a number of the presumed attendees for Wednesday's event emerged as vocal critics of the then-Republican nominee-Bezos and Cook chief among them. On a number of occasions, Trump took to Twitter to rail on Bezos and the Washington Post, which is owned by the Amazon founder and took a hardline against the New York businessman during the election. Similarly, Trump and Cook were at odds throughout the election. The then-presidential hopeful frequently lambasted the Cupertino tech giant over taxes and manufacturing its products outside of the U.S., and at one point he even called for a boycott of Apple products.

Silicon Valley pulled out the stops during the campaign to highlight why they believed Trump would be bad for innovation.

One open letter against Trump was signed by 145 tech leaders, including well-known names like Apple cofounder Steve Wozniak, Slack CEO Stewart Butterfield, IAC's Barry Diller, Reddit's Alexis Ohanian and Wikipedia's Jimmy Wales.

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