Jeff Bezos: Trump tech summit was 'very productive'

JP Mangalindan
·Chief Tech Correspondent

Amazon (AMZN) CEO Jeff Bezos had some carefully chosen words to describe President-elect Donald Trump’s tech summit, held Wednesday afternoon in New York City’s Trump Tower.

“I found today’s meeting with the President-elect, his transition team, and tech leaders to be very productive,” Bezos told Yahoo Finance in a statement. “I shared the view that the administration should make innovation one of its key pillars, which would create a huge number of jobs across the whole country, in all sectors, not just tech—agriculture, infrastructure, manufacturing—everywhere.”

The meeting, which lasted an hour, included Amazon (AMZN) CEO and Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos, Apple (AAPL) CEO Tim Cook, Tesla (TESLA) CEO Elon Musk, Microsoft (MSFT) CEO Satya Nadella, Intel (INTC) CEO Brian Krzanich, Facebook (FB) COO Sheryl Sandberg, Oracle (ORCL) co-CEO Safra Catz, Cisco (CSCO) CEO Chuck Robbins, Palantir CEO Alex Karp, as well as Larry Page and Eric Schmidt, CEO and chairman of Google (GOOG) parent Alphabet, respectively.

Also, in attendance: Vice President-elect Mike Pence, billionaire tech investor and transition team member Peter Thiel, chief advisor Steve Bannon, chief-of-staff Reince Priebus and three of Trump’s children: Ivanka, Eric, and Donald, Jr.

Organized by Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, Priebus and Thiel, the meeting was intended as an introductory session, Reuters reported.

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos had some choice words following President-elect Donald Trump's tech summit, held in Trump Tower in New York City.
Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos had some choice words following President-elect Donald Trump’s tech summit, held in Trump Tower in New York City.

Bezos’ amicable words are notable, given Trump and Bezos locked horns when the president-elect temporarily blacklisted The Washington Post, which Bezos bought in 2013, from campaign events, and described Bezos’ ownership of the Post as a tax dodge. Likewise, Cook and Page participated in a discussion back in May at the American Enterprise Institute’s annual World Forum around how to stop Trump’s nomination.

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JP Mangalindan is a senior correspondent for Yahoo Finance covering the intersection of tech and business. Follow him on Twitter or Facebook.

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