Invitations were sent out last week and less than a dozen people are attending —mostly executives from Silicon Valley, Re/code sources said over the weekend. Some others include Alphabet CEO Larry Page, Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins, IBM CEO Ginni Rometty, Intel CEO Brian Krzanich, and Oracle CEO Safra Catz. Catz confirmed his attendance in a statement.
"I plan to tell the President-Elect that we are with him and will help in any way we can," he said. "If he can reform the tax code, reduce regulation and negotiate better trade deals, the U.S. technology industry will be stronger and more competitive than ever."
Two other possible attendees are Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, and Tesla/SpaceX CEO Elon Musk. Of the two, only Bezos is said to have definitely received an invitation, despite his Washington Post regularly publishing exposes of Trump.
Invitations were allegedly sent out by Trump's chief of staff, Reince Preibus, as well as investor and supporter Peter Thiel, and Trump's advisor and son-in-law, Jared Kushner. Thiel and others on Trump's team are said to have had a hard time persuading tech executives to attend, given Trump's regular attacks against them during his presidential campaign.
Trump has taken opposing stances on issues like encryption, immigration, and sometimes social issues. With Apple, he has berated the company for not doing more manufacturing in the U.S., and once called on people to boycott Apple after it refused to write software allowing the FBI to bypass encryption on the iPhone of San Bernardino shooter Syed Rizwan Farook.
The Re/code sources suggested that despite their reluctance, some tech executives may have had little choice but to go to the summit, since they've participated in such things before. Nevertheless, others aren't going, whether they're intentionally avoiding Trump or or simply received their invitations too late —some are only said to have been sent out late last week.
"I think my invite got lost in the mail," an anonymous executive claimed. "Of course, this kind of thing will never happen again as of January."
Source: appleinsider