Trump hosted tech leaders at the White House to discuss domestic investments and room for further development in an unexpected dinner which snubbed former aide and chief of Department of Government Efficiency, Elon Musk,
Euronews reports.
US President Donald Trump hosted a group of tech executives at the White House for dinner on Thursday, but one name was notably absent from the guest list: Tesla, SpaceX and X boss Elon Musk.
Musk, once a close ally of Trump’s who was previously tasked with leading DOGE, an initiative designed to cut back on wasteful federal spending, did not appear to make the exclusive cut of senior tech leaders.
The pair have not been on good standing since their highly public feud earlier this year over disagreements on Trump’s "Big Beautiful Bill", which Musk called “idiotic”, arguing that it will push federal expenditure and debt levels to new heights.
Musk later intensified the row with Trump, taking to X to accuse him of deliberately concealing disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein’s files to cover up his own involvement with the convicted sex offender.
Instead of Musk, Sam Altman, who heads OpenAI, the company responsible for ChatGPT, and one of Musk’s biggest rivals in the rapidly advancing artificial intelligence space, was present.
In another reflection of shifting loyalties in Trump's world, the dinner included Jared Isaacman, who founded the payment processing company Shift4.
Isaacman was a Musk ally chosen by Trump to lead NASA, only to have his nomination withdrawn because he was, in Trump's words, “totally a Democrat.”
