A few details have been circulating about what was said during President-elect Donald Trump’s highly anticipated meeting with nearly a dozen of Silicon Valley’s top CEOs at Trump Tower in New York City today.
The press was allowed into the meeting room at the beginning of the discussion while those in attendance greeted each other. “This is a truly amazing group of people,” Trump told the group, according to a New York Times video. “I’m here to help you folks do well,” he added.
Trump went on to talk about “the bounce” and how everyone is talking about the bounce. “So right now everybody in this room has to like me—at least a little bit— but we’re going to try and have that bounce continue,” he said. Presumably Trump was talking about the stock market’s recent gains.
Those attending the meeting included Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins, Oracle CEO Safra Catz, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, Intel CEO Brian Krzanich, IBM CEO Ginni Rometty, Alphabet Chairman Eric Schmidt and CEO Larry Page, Apple CEO Tim Cook, Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, and Tesla CEO Elon Musk.
Interestingly, one lesser-known CEO in the room was Palantir CEO Alex Karp. Palantir is a data analytics firm that works with companies to integrate and analyze information from databases that are scattered across multiple geographic areas and even continents. Trump’s tech advisor Peter Thiel is a significant investor in Palantir.
According to the New York Times video, shortly after introductions Trump told the attendees that he would do anything to help the group. “You’ll call my people, you’ll call me. It doesn’t make any difference,” Trump said. “We have no formal chain of command around here.”
Hours before the scheduled meeting the president-elect announced that Telsa’s Musk and Uber CEO Travis Kalanick would be joining his Strategic and Policy Forum, alongside other business leaders including IBM’s Rometty.