Business

The Winklevoss twins and Big Tobacco are on the list of donors helping fund Trump’s East Wing teardown. Nvidia isn’t, but Jensen Huang is involved, too

Published

3 weeks ago

November 13, 2025

President Donald Trump says his $300 million White House ballroom will be paid for “100% by me and some friends of mine.”

The White House released a list of 37 donors, including crypto billionaires, charitable organizations, sports team owners, powerful financiers, tech and tobacco giants, media companies, longtime supporters of Republican causes and several of the president’s neighbors in Palm Beach, Florida.

It’s incomplete. Among others, the list doesn’t include Carrier Group, which offered to donate an HVAC system for the ballroom, and artificial intelligence chipmaker Nvidia, whose CEO, Jensen Huang, publicly discussed its donation.

The White House hasn’t said how much each donor is giving, and almost none was willing to divulge that. Very few commented on their contributions when contacted by The Associated Press.

A senior White House official said the list has grown since it was first released in October, but some companies don’t want to be publicly named until required to do so by financial disclosure regulations. No foreign individuals or entities were among the donors, according to the official who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss details that haven’t been made public.

Here’s a look at the divulged donors:

Tech giants (8):

Amazon Background: Trump was once highly critical of company founder Jeff Bezos, who also owns The Washington Post, but has been much less so lately. Amazon donated $1 million to Trump’s inauguration, an event attended by Bezos. Its video streaming service paid $40 million to license a documentary about first lady Melania Trump. Its cloud-based computing operation, Amazon Web Services, is a major government contractor.

Apple Background: After an up-and-down relationship during Trump’s first term, CEO Tim Cook has sought to improve his standing with the president this time. Before returning to the White House, Trump hosted Cook at his Palm Beach estate, Mar-a-Lago, and said he had spoken with Cook about the company’s long-running tax battles with the European Union. Cook also donated $1 million to Trump’s inauguration fund. In the spring, Trump threatened the computing giant with tariffs after Apple announced plans to build manufacturing facilities in India. In August, Cook presented the president with a customized glass plaque with a gold base as the CEO announced plans to bring Apple’s total investment commitment in U.S. manufacturing over four years to $600 billion.

Google Background: During his first term, Trump’s administration sued Google for antitrust violations. While a candidate last year, Trump suggested he might seek to break up the search engine behemoth. Once Trump won the election, Google donated $1 million to his inauguration, and its CEO, Sundar Pichai, joined other major tech executives in attending the ceremony. Google’s subsidiary, YouTube, agreed in September to pay $24.5 million to settle a lawsuit with Trump after it suspended his account following the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol. According to court filings, $22 million of that went to the Trust for the National Mall, which can help pay for ballroom construction.

HP Background: An original Silicon Valley stalwart, the company donated to Trump’s inaugural fund. HP ‘s CEO, Enrique Lores, participated in a White House roundtable event in September. Lores also previously met with President Joe Biden at the White House on multiple occasions as top CEOs endorsed that administration’s economic plans.

Meta Background: Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg had been critical of Trump going back to 2016, and Facebook suspended Trump for years after the Jan. 6 insurrection. This time around, Meta contributed $1 million to Trump’s inauguration, and Zuckerberg attended.

Micron Technology Background: The producer of advanced memory computer chips announced an April 2024 agreement with the Biden administration to provide $6.1 billion in government support for Micron to make chips domestically. Then, in June, Micron pledged $200 billion for U.S. memory chip manufacturing expansion under Trump. But at least $120 billion of that involved holdovers first announced during Biden’s administration.

Microsoft Background: The company donated $1 million to Trump’s inauguration, twice what it spent for Biden’s or for Trump’s first inauguration. CEO Satya Nadella has also met with Trump numerous times, as Microsoft has supported the administration’s relaxation of regulations on artificial intelligence. He met previously with Biden, too. Trump has called for Microsoft’s president of global affairs, Lisa Monaco, to be fired because she was a deputy attorney general under Biden when the Justice Department led several investigations against Trump.

Palantir Technologies Background: Co-founded by billionaire libertarian Peter Thiel, the firm concentrates on artificial intelligence and machine learning. It has seen profits soar thanks to lucrative defense and other federal contracts.

Crypto (5):

Coinbase Background: The major cryptocurrency exchange was founded by Brian Armstrong, a top donor to a political action committee that helped Trump and other pro-crypto candidates in 2024. Armstrong attended the first crypto summit at the White House in March. Coinbase also hired Trump’s co-campaign manager, Chris LaCivita, to its Global Advisory Council.

Ripple Background: In March, the Securities and Exchange Commission dropped a lawsuit filed during Trump’s first term, which accused the company of violating securities laws by selling XRP crypto coins without a securities registration. In his second term, Trump has eased regulations on digital assets, repealing an SEC accounting rule and a previous presidential executive order mandating more federal study and proposed changes to crypto regulations.

Tether Background: A cryptocurrency company and major stablecoin issuer, Tether paid fines for misleading investors. CEO Paolo Ardoino has been to Trump’s White House, and, in April, the company hired former Trump administration crypto policy official Bo Hines to lead its domestic expansion efforts.

Cameron Winklevoss and Tyler Winklevoss Background: Each Winklevoss twin is listed as a separate donor. Best known as Zuckerberg’s chief antagonists in “The Social Network,” the brothers founded the Gemini cryptocurrency exchange. Biden’s SEC sued Gemini for selling unregistered securities, but the case has been paused under Trump.

Energy and industrial (4):

Caterpillar Background: The equipment maker ‘s PAC has donated to candidates from both parties, but given more to Republicans. It has also said publicly that Trump’s tariffs, some of which the administration has now eased, could increase its costs and hurt earnings.

NextEra Energy Background: NextEra is the world’s largest electric utility holding company. Trump says he’ll work to ensure tech giants can secure their own sources of electricity to power data centers, especially as they expand energy-hogging artificial intelligence operations. Google recently entered into an agreement to buy power from a shuttered nuclear power plant in Iowa owned by NextEra, which the company plans to bring back online in 2029.

Paolo Tiramani Background: An American industrial designer who has donated to Trump’s political campaigns. Tiramani, with his son, runs BOXABL, a firm specializing in modular, prefabricated homes.

Union Pacific Background: Trump has endorsed the company’s proposed $85 billion acquisition of Norfolk Southern, which would be the largest-ever rail merger. It also will be up to the president to appoint two more Republican members of the Surface Transportation Board, who will ultimately decide whether to approve the merger. In August, Trump fired one of the two Democratic members of the board.

Philanthropy (3):

Adelson Family Foundation Background: Founded to strengthen the state of Israel and the Jewish people, the foundation was created by Miriam Adelson, the majority owner of the NBA’s Dallas Mavericks, close Trump ally and longtime GOP megadonor. She’s also the widow of Sheldon Adelson, the billionaire founder and owner of Las Vegas Sands.

Betty Wold Johnson Foundation Background: Based in Palm Beach, the foundation supports health, arts and culture initiatives, as well as environmental and educational programs. It’s named in honor of the mother of New York Jets owner Woody Johnson, who served as Trump’s ambassador to the United Kingdom during his first term.

Laura & Isaac Perlmutter Foundation Background: The nonprofit based in Lake Worth Beach, near Palm Beach, focuses on promoting health care, social justice, the arts and community initiatives. Isaac is an Israeli American businessman and financier and former chair of Marvel Entertainment. He and his wife have donated to Trump’s presidential campaigns and affiliated PACs.

Trump administration officials (3):

Benjamin Leon Jr. Background: The Cuban American founder of Miami-based Leon Medical Centers is Trump’s nominee for U.S. ambassador to Spain.

Kelly Loeffler and Jeffrey Sprecher Background: A former Republican senator from Georgia, Loeffler heads Trump’s Small Business Administration. Her husband is CEO of the energy market Intercontinental Exchange Inc. and chairs the New York Stock Exchange. The couple faced scrutiny in 2020 for dumping substantial portions of their portfolio and purchasing new stocks, including in firms making protective equipment, after Congress received briefings on the severity of the coming coronavirus pandemic.

Lutnick Family Background: Howard Lutnick is Trump’s commerce secretary. A crypto enthusiast, he once headed the brokerage and investment bank Cantor Fitzgerald.

Communications/entertainment (3):

Comcast Background: The mass media and telecom conglomerate has often been criticized by Trump, including in April, when the president posted that Comcast was a “disgrace to the integrity of broadcasting.” The company owns NBC and is spinning off MSNBC. It could be interested in acquiring Warner Bros. Discover, and that would leave Comcast looking for government approval.

Hard Rock International Background: A Florida-based gaming and tourism concern owned by the Seminole Tribe, the company operates a number of casinos, including the former Trump Taj Mahal casino in Atlantic City, New Jersey. Trump has for decades criticized federal exemptions allowing tribes to operate casinos.

T-Mobile Background: The wireless carrier is indirectly linked to Trump Mobile, which the president’s family controls and offers gold phones and cell service in a licensing deal. Trump Mobile uses Liberty Mobile Wireless, a small, Florida-based network that T-Mobile says runs its operations on T-Mobile’s network. T-Mobile says that is unrelated to its decision to donate to Trump’s ballroom, which it says is meant to “restore and enrich the historic landmarks that define our nation’s capital.”

Big Tobacco (2):

Altria Group Background: The tobacco giant controls Philip Morris USA, maker of Marlboro. It has pressed for federal crackdowns on counterfeit and illegal vaping products. The company donated $50,000 to Trump’s inauguration.

Reynolds American Background: With brands including Lucky Strike and Camel, the company has been active in lobbying to steer the Trump administration away from a Biden-proposed ban on menthol cigarettes.

Defense/national security (2):

Booz Allen Hamilton Background: A major defense and national security technology firm with extensive government contracts, it paid fines to settle lawsuits with the Justice Department under Biden. Booz Allen Hamilton agreed to pay more than $377 million in 2023 to settle allegations that it improperly billing costs to its government contracts. In January, it paid nearly $16 million to settle allegations that it submitted fraudulent claims in connection with government contracts.

Lockheed Martin Corporation Background: The massive defense contractor has huge government contracts. It said in a statement that it “is grateful for the opportunity to help bring the President’s vision to reality and make this addition to the People’s House.”

Individuals (7):

Stefan E. Brodie Background: A biotech entrepreneur and co-founder of the chemical manufacturing company Purolite, Brodie and his family donated to Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign and affiliated committees. Brodie and his brother, Donald, were convicted in 2002 of circumventing U.S. sanctions on Cuba.

Charles and Marissa Cascarilla Background: Charles Cascarilla is co‑founder of the blockchain firm Paxos. He and his wife are philanthropists who have advocated for financial technology sector deregulation.

J. Pepe and Emilia Fanjul Background: Longtime Republican donors and Palm Beach residents, the couple controls U.S. sugar refining interests that includes the Domino brand.

Edward and Shari Glazer Background: Members of the family that owns the NFL’s Tampa Bay Buccaneers and has a controlling stake in the Manchester United football club, the couple donated to Trump’s campaign. Edward is the founder and CEO of US Property Trust, which operates shopping centers, and the car dealership company US Auto Trust.

Harold Hamm Background: The billionaire oil tycoon and pioneer of hydraulic fracturing heads the oil producer Continental Resources. He’s praised the Trump administration for aggressively moving to purchase oil to replenish the Strategic Petroleum Reserve stockpile.

Stephen A. Schwarzman Background: A Palm Beach resident and chair and CEO of the Blackstone Group, a global private equity firm he helped establish in 1985. Schwarzman has donated to Trump and his PACs previously and led his first-term President’s Strategic and Policy Forum.

Konstantin Sokolov Background: Born in Russia, he immigrated to the U.S. and now heads the Chicago-based private equity firm IJS Investments. Sokolov has donated to many educational and charitable causes in the past, and to Trump’s political campaigns.

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Associated Press writer Darlene Superville contributed to this report.

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Business

Quant who said passive era is ‘worse than Marxism’ doubles down

Published

26 minutes ago

December 6, 2025

Jace Porter

Inigo Fraser Jenkins once warned that passive investing was worse for society than Marxism. Now he says even that provocative framing may prove too generous.

In his latest note, the AllianceBernstein strategist argues that the trillions of dollars pouring into index funds aren’t just tracking markets — they are distorting them. Big Tech’s dominance, he says, has been amplified by passive flows that reward size over substance. Investors are funding incumbents by default, steering more capital to the biggest names simply because they already dominate benchmarks.

He calls it a “dystopian symbiosis”: a feedback loop between index funds and platform giants like Apple Inc., Microsoft Corp. and Nvidia Corp. that concentrates power, stifles competition, and gives the illusion of safety. Unlike earlier market cycles driven by fundamentals or active conviction, today’s flows are automatic, often indifferent to risk.

Fraser Jenkins is hardly alone in sounding the alarm. But his latest critique has reignited a debate that’s grown harder to ignore. Just 10 companies now account for more than a third of the S&P 500’s value, with tech names driving an outsize share of 2025’s gains.

“Platform companies and a lack of active capital allocation both imply a less effective form of capitalism with diminished competition,” he wrote in a Friday note. “A concentrated market and high proportion of flows into cap weighted ‘passive’ indices leads to greater risks should recent trends reverse.”

While the emergence of behemoth companies might be reflective of more effective uses of technology, it could also be the result of failures of anti-trust policies, among other things, he argues. Artificial intelligence might intensify these issues and could lead to even greater concentrations of power among firms.

His note, titled “The Dystopian Symbiosis: Passive Investing and Platform Capitalism,” is formatted as a fictional dialog between three people who debate the topic. One of the characters goes as far as to argue that the present situation requires an active policy intervention — drawing comparisons to the breakup of Standard Oil at the start of the 20th century — to restore competition.

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In a provocative note titled “The Silent Road to Serfdom: Why Passive Investing is Worse Than Marxism” and written nearly a decade ago, Fraser Jenkins argued that the rise of index-tracking investing would lead to greater stock correlations, which would impede “the efficient allocation of capital.” His employer, AllianceBernstein, has continued to launch ETFs since the famous research was published, though its launches have been actively managed.

Other active managers have presented similar viewpoints — managers at Apollo Global Management last year said the hidden costs of the passive-investing juggernaut included higher volatility and lower liquidity.

There have been strong rebuttals to the critique: a Goldman Sachs Group Inc. study showed the role of fundamentals remains an all-powerful driver for stock valuations; Citigroup Inc. found that active managers themselves exert a far bigger influence than their passive rivals on a stock’s performance relative to its industry.

“ETFs don’t ruin capitalism, they exemplify it,” said Eric Balchunas, Bloomberg Intelligence’s senior ETF analyst. “The competition and innovation are through the roof. That is capitalism in its finest form and the winner in that is the investor.”

Since Fraser Jenkins’s “Marxism” note, the passive juggernaut has only grown. Index-tracking ETFs, which have grown in popularity thanks to their ease of trading and relatively cheaper management fees, are often cited as one of the primary culprits in this debate. The segment has raked in $842 billion so far this year, compared with the $438 billion hauled in by actively managed funds, even as there are more active products than there are passive ones, data compiled by Bloomberg show. Of the more than $13 trillion that’s in ETFs overall, $11.8 trillion is parked in passive vehicles. The majority of ETF ownership is concentrated in low-cost index funds that have significantly reduced the cost for investors to access financial markets.

In Fraser Jenkins’s new note, one of his fictitious characters ask another what the “dystopian symbiosis” implies for investors.

“The passive index is riskier than it has been in the past,” the character answers. “The scale of the flows that have been disproportionately into passive cap-weighted funds with a high exposure to the mega cap companies implies the risk of a significant negative wealth effect if there is an upset to expectations for those large companies.”

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Business

Why the timing was right for Salesforce’s $8 billion acquisition of Informatica — and for the opportunities ahead

Published

57 minutes ago

December 6, 2025

Jace Porter

The must-haves for building a market-leading business include vision, talent, culture, product innovation and customer focus. But what’s the secret to success with a merger or acquisition?

I was asked about this in the wake of Salesforce’s recently completed $8 billion acquisition of Informatica. In part, I believe that people are paying attention because deal-making is up in 2025. M&A volume reached $2.2 trillion in the first half of the year, a 27% increase compared to a year ago, according to JP Morgan. Notably, 72% of that volume involved deals greater than $1 billion.

There will be thousands of mergers and acquisitions in the United States this year across industries and involving companies of all sizes. It’s not unusual for startups to position themselves to be snapped up. But Informatica, founded in 1993, didn’t fit that mold. We have been building, delivering, supporting and partnering for many years. Much of the value we bring to Salesforce and its customers is our long-earned experience and expertise in enterprise data management.

Although, in other respects, a “legacy” software company like ours — founded well before cloud computing was mainstream — and early-stage startups aren’t so different. We all must move fast and differentiate. And established vendors and growth-oriented startups have a few things in common when it comes to M&A, as well.

First and foremost is a need to ensure that the strategies of the two companies involved are in alignment. That seems obvious, but it’s easier said than done. Are their tech stacks based on open protocols and standards? Are they cloud-native by design? And, now more than ever, are they both AI-powered and AI-enabling? All of these came together in the case of Salesforce and Informatica, including our shared belief in agentic AI as the next major breakthrough in business technology.

Don’t take your foot off the gas

In the days after the acquisition was completed, I was asked during a media interview if good luck was a factor in bringing together these two tech industry stalwarts. Replace good luck with good timing, and the answer is a resounding, “Yes!”

As more businesses pursue the productivity and other benefits of agentic AI, they require high-quality data to be successful. These are two areas where Salesforce and Informatica excel, respectively. And the agentic AI opportunity — estimated to grow to $155 billion by 2030 — is here and now. So the timing of the acquisition was perfect.

Tremendous effort goes into keeping an organization on track, leading up to an acquisition and then seeing it through to a smooth and successful completion. In the few months between the announcement of Salesforce’s intent to acquire Informatica and the close, we announced new partnerships and customer engagements and a fall product release that included autonomous AI agents, MCP servers and more.

In other words, there’s no easing into the new future. We must maintain the pace of business because the competitive environment and our customers require it. That’s true whether you’re a small, venture-funded organization or, like us, an established firm with thousands of employees and customers. Going forward we plan to keep doing what we do best: help organizations connect, manage and unify their AI data.

Out with the old, in with the new

It’s wrong to think of an acquisition as an end game. It’s a new chapter.

Business leaders and employees in many organizations have demonstrated time and again that they are quite good at adapting to an ever-changing competitive landscape. A few years ago, we undertook a company-wide shift from on-premises software to cloud-first. There was short-term disruption but long-term advantage. It’s important to develop an organizational mindset that thrives on change and transformation, so when the time comes, you’re ready for these big steps.

So, even as we take pride in all that we accomplished to get to this point, we now begin to take on a fresh identity as part of a larger whole. It’s an opportunity to engage new colleagues and flourish professionally. And importantly, customers will be the beneficiaries of these new collaborations and synergies. On the day Informatica was welcomed into the Salesforce family and ecosystem, I shared my feeling that “the best is yet to come.” That’s my North Star and one I recommend to every business leader forging ahead into an M&A evolution — because the truest measure of success ultimately will be what we accomplish next.

The opinions expressed in Fortune.com commentary pieces are solely the views of their authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and beliefs of Fortune.

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Business

The ‘Great Housing Reset’ is coming: Income growth will outpace home-price growth in 2026

Published

1 hour ago

December 6, 2025

Jace Porter

Homebuyers may experience a reprieve in 2026 as price normalization and an increase in home sales over the next year will take some pressure off the market—but don’t expect homebuying to be affordable in the short run for Gen Z and young families.

The “Great Housing Reset” will start next year, with income growth outpacing home-price growth for a prolonged period for the first time since the Great Recession era, according to a Redfin report released this week.

The residential real estate brokerage sees mortgage rates in the low-6% range, down from down from the 2025 average of 6.6%; a median home sales price increase of just 1%, down from 2% this year; and monthly housing payments growth that will lag behind wage growth, which will remain steady at 4%.

These trends toward increased affordability will likely bring back some house hunters to the market, but many Gen Zers and young families will opt for nontraditional living situations, according to the report.

More adult children will be living with their parents, as households continue to shift further away from a nuclear family structure, Redfin predicted.

“Picture a garage that’s converted into a second primary suite for adult children moving back in with their parents,” the report’s authors wrote. “Redfin agents in places like Los Angeles and Nashville say more homeowners are planning to tailor their homes to share with extended family.”

Gen Z and millennial homeownership rates plateaued last year, with no improvement expected. Just over one-quarter of Gen Zers owned their home in 2024, while the rate for millennial owners was 54.9% in the same year.

Meanwhile, about 6% of Americans who struggled to afford housing as of mid-2025 moved back in with their parents, while another 6% moved in with roommates. Both trends are expected to increase in 2026, according to the report.

Obstacles to home affordability

Despite factors that could increase affordability for prospective homebuyers, C. Scott Schwefel, a real estate attorney at Shipman, Shaiken & Schwefel, LLC, told Fortune that income growth and home-price growth are just a few keys to sustainable homeownership.

An improved income-to-price ratio is welcome, but unless tax bills stabilize, many households may not experience a net relief, Schwefel said.

“Prospective buyers need to recognize that affordability is not just price versus income…it’s price, mortgage rate and the annual bill for living in a place—and that bill includes property taxes,” he added.

In November, voters—especially young ones—showed lowering housing costs is their priority, the report said. But they also face high sale prices and mortgage rates, inflated insurance premiums, and potential utility costs hikes due to a data center construction boom that’s driving up energy bills. The report’s authors expect there to be a bipartisan push to help remedy the housing affordability crisis.

Still, an affordable housing market for first-time home buyers and young families still may be far away.

“The U.S. housing market should be considered moving from frozen to thawing,” Sergio Altomare, CEO of Hearthfire Holdings, a real estate private equity and development company, told Fortune.

“Prices aren’t surging, but they’re no longer falling,” he added. “We are beginning to unlock some activity that’s been trapped for a couple of years.”

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