Microsoft contributes $1 million to Trump’s inauguration fund
President Donald Trump shakes hands with Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella during an American Technology Council roundtable at the White House in Washington on June 19, 2017.
Nicholas Kamm | AFP | Getty Images
Microsoft said Thursday that it’s contributing $1 million to President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration fund.
The software maker is now more closely aligned with its highly valued peers in the technology industry. Google said earlier on Thursday that it’s donating $1 million to the Trump fund, and Meta offered the same amount in December. Amazon was reportedly looking to make a similar contribution.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said in December that he would contribute $1 million individually, and Axios reported last week that Apple CEO Tim Cook will do the same.
Elon Musk, Tesla’s CEO and the world’s richest person, has been advising Trump as he prepares to return to the White House following the inauguration later this month.
Microsoft also contributed $500,000 to the first inauguration fund for Trump’s first term and gave the same amount to President Joe Biden’s fund, a Microsoft spokesperson told CNBC.
Satya Nadella, Microsoft’s CEO, has met with Trump on multiple occasions, including over negotiations surrounding a possible acquisition of TikTok in the U.S. in 2020. Nadella also joined a Trump roundtable of technology executives from around the country in 2017.
Microsoft is hoping that under Trump, the U.S. will push artificial intelligence policy in a favorable direction.
“The United States needs a smart international strategy to rapidly support American AI around the world,” Brad Smith, Microsoft’s vice chair and president, wrote in a blog post last week.
WATCH: Microsoft to end 2024 with capital expenditures of at least $53 billion
Technology
Figure AI sued by whistleblower who warned that startup’s robots could ‘fracture a human skull’
Startup Figure AI is developing general-purpose humanoid robots.
Figure AI
Figure AI, an Nvidia-backed developer of humanoid robots, was sued by the startup’s former head of product safety who alleged that he was wrongfully terminated after warning top executives that the company’s robots “were powerful enough to fracture a human skull.”
Robert Gruendel, a principal robotic safety engineer, is the plaintiff in the suit filed Friday in a federal court in the Northern District of California. Gruendel’s attorneys describe their client as a whistleblower who was fired in September, days after lodging his “most direct and documented safety complaints.”
The suit lands two months after Figure was valued at $39 billion in a funding round led by Parkway Venture Capital. That’s a 15-fold increase in valuation from early 2024, when the company raised a round from investors including Jeff Bezos, Nvidia, and Microsoft.
In the complaint, Gruendel’s lawyers say the plaintiff warned Figure CEO Brett Adcock and Kyle Edelberg, chief engineer, about the robot’s lethal capabilities, and said one “had already carved a ¼-inch gash into a steel refrigerator door during a malfunction.”
The complaint also says Gruendel warned company leaders not to “downgrade” a “safety road map” that he had been asked to present to two prospective investors who ended up funding the company.
Gruendel worried that a “product safety plan which contributed to their decision to invest” had been “gutted” the same month Figure closed the investment round, a move that “could be interpreted as fraudulent,” the suit says.
The plaintiff’s concerns were “treated as obstacles, not obligations,” and the company cited a “vague ‘change in business direction’ as the pretext” for his termination, according to the suit.
Gruendel is seeking economic, compensatory and punitive damages and demanding a jury trial.
Figure didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. Nor did attorneys for Gruendel.
The humanoid robot market remains nascent today, with companies like Tesla and Boston Dynamics pursuing futuristic offerings, alongside Figure, while China’s Unitree Robotics is preparing for an IPO. Morgan Stanley said in a report in May that adoption is “likely to accelerate in the 2030s” and could top $5 trillion by 2050.
Read the filing here:
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