US President Donald Trump is set to host a prestigious dinner for a select group of high-profile tech leaders at the White House’s newly renovated Rose Garden on Thursday.
One notable absence from the guest list is Tesla CEO and SpaceX founder Elon Musk, a once-close ally of the president.
Why was Elon Musk excluded?
Elon Musk’s exclusion from the event is due to a shift in his relationship with President Trump. The two had enjoyed a close working relationship in the early months of Trump’s presidency, with Musk even serving as the head of DOGE for a brief period.
However, over time, their bond soured due to a series of public disagreements and political tensions.
In a recent phone interview with commentator Scott Jennings, Trump spoke about Musk’s exceptional intelligence but also noted his challenges.
“He is got 80% super genius, and then 20% he is got some problems,” Trump also made some striking claims regarding Musk’s new political ideologies.
“What is he gonna do? He is gonna go with the radical left lunatics? They’re lunatics,” Trump remarked. Despite these comments, he added, “I like him now, but he went off the reservation. I wish he hadn’t.”
The apparent fallout between the two explains why Musk, despite his influence in the tech industry, was not invited to the exclusive event.
Full list of guests
While Musk may have been excluded, the guest list for Trump’s Rose Garden dinner remains star-studded.
Among the high-profile invitees are some of the biggest names in tech and business, including Greg Brockman, President of OpenAI; Sergey Brin, Google Co-Founder; Shyam Sankar, CTO of Palantir; and Alexandr Wang, Co-Founder of Scale AI and Head of Superintelligence at Meta.
The event will also feature CEOs from major companies like Sundar Pichai of Google, Satya Nadella of Microsoft, Safra Catz of Oracle, and David Limp of Micron Technology.
David Sacks, a venture capitalist and the White House’s crypto and AI czar, is also expected to attend, alongside Jared Isaacman, founder of Shift4, who has remained in Trump’s orbit despite the president withdrawing his nomination to run NASA in June.
However, Tim Cook of Apple and Jeff Bezos won’t make it to the event.