Chicken, crypto and Nvidia: The companies that helped Trump’s inauguration shatter fundraising records

Yahoo Finance
8 hours ago

A wide array of companies helped Donald Trump shatter fundraising records during his second inauguration, a new filing with the Federal Election Commission shows, with nearly 140 donors giving at least $1 million each.

Many of the gifts were previously announced, but the newly-released list offers a more complete accounting and spans over 650 donors. The list is also a veritable who’s who of corporate America with donors ranging from OpenAI CEO Sam Altman to Chevron (CVX) to current members of the Trump administration.

All told, these donors helped the Trump-Vance Inaugural Committee net a record-setting $239 million haul. It was a figure that more than doubled the previous record of $107 million — raised eight years ago during Trump’s first inauguration.

Most of the largest companies in America — Alphabet (GOOG), Amazon (AMZN), JPMorgan Chase (JPM), Meta (META), NVIDIA (NVDA) and many more — were represented on the list with each offering sizable donations.

Many of these companies were also prominently represented during Trump’s inaugural ceremonies in January.

Priscilla Chan, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Lauren Sanchez, businessman Jeff Bezos, Alphabet's CEO Sundar Pichai, and Elon Musk during Donald Trump's inauguration ceremony in the US Capitol Rotunda in on January 20. (SHAWN THEW/POOL/AFP via Getty Images)
SHAWN THEW via Getty Images

This filing was a demonstration of the outpouring of business-world support that Trump saw during his return to power — which has been tempered in recent weeks by the president's tariff focus that has brought uncertainty to many of these companies and weighed on their supply chains and stock prices.

The donations were intended to pay for a wide array of events around Trump’s January 20th swearing in ceremonies. A full accounting of how the money was spent — as well as whether there was a surplus and the plans for that money — won’t be revealed until later.

Poultry producer Pilgrim's Pride Corporation (PPC) gave $5 million, the single biggest donation in the filing. Cryptocurrency-adjacent companies also gave generously, with blockchain company Ripple Labs giving nearly $4.9 million and stock and crypto trading platform Robinhood (HOOD) adding $2 million. 

Cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase (COIN) was among the companies that offered $1 million as did a wide array of well-known brands from Anheuser-Busch (BUD) to Pfizer (PFE) to Verizon (VZ).

In fact, more than 120 donors gave exactly $1 million to the committee after a wave of public pronouncements in the lead-up to inauguration day with various companies pledging to give that amount.

Many top CEOs also personally gave that amount, such as Apple's (APPL) Tim Cook, Uber’s (UBER) Dara Khosrowshahi, and Citadel’s Kenneth Griffin — just a few of the figures who wrote million dollar checks, the filings show.

Many on the donor list have also since joined the Trump administration.

Warren Stephens, Jared Isaacman, and Melissa Argyros each gave over $2 million. The three represent the top individual givers and are also Trump’s picks to be, respectively, ambassador to Britain, NASA administrator, and ambassador to Latvia.

Cantor Fitzgerald, which was recently headed by now-Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, donated $1.047 million. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent chipped in $250,000. Linda McMahon, now the US Secretary of Education, wrote a check for $1 million.

Federal law offers inaugural committees significant flexibility in how they can raise money with Trump eschewing limits on contribution size, unlike some of his predecessors.

The group actually raised over $245 million in total, the records show, but refunded $6.2 million to donors.

Ben Werschkul is a Washington correspondent for Yahoo Finance.

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