Five Indian-American CEOs Among Tech Leaders At Donald Trump’s White House Dinner

Five Indian-American leaders were among more than a dozen CEOs who attended US President Donald Trump’s dinner for top tech executives at the White House. The event comes amid rising tensions in MAGA circles over immigration, job losses and the growing presence of foreign executives in American tech.

The Indian-origin executives at the Rose Garden event included Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Microsoft’s Satya Nadella, Sanjay Mehrotra, CEO of semiconductor firm Micron Technology, TIBCO Software’s chairman Vivek Ranadive and Shyam Sankar, CTO at data analytics company Palantir. 

Sundar Pichai has been CEO of Google’s parent company, Alphabet, since 2019, after becoming Google CEO in 2015. He joined the company in 2004, coincidentally on the day Gmail launched.

Satya Nadella, chairman and CEO of Microsoft, has grown Microsoft Azure into a top cloud platform and led major acquisitions, including LinkedIn ($26 billion) and Activision Blizzard ($69 billion). He has also invested over $10 billion in OpenAI and launched Microsoft’s AI tools, including CoPilot.

Sanjay Mehrotra is the chairman, president and CEO of Micron Technology, a company that works in the memory and storage solutions space. He co-founded SanDisk, which popularised flash storage. He has a background as a semiconductor design engineer.

Vivek Ranadive is the founder of TIBCO Software, known for its data integration and analytics solutions. He is now the chairman, CEO and governor of the NBA team Sacramento Kings, as well as an entrepreneur, author, and philanthropist. 

Shyam Sankar is the chief technology officer of Palantir Technologies, where he has played a key role in the company’s growth. Under his leadership, Palantir’s stock has risen sharply, making it one of the most influential AI firms globally. 

Other notable attendees included Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Meta, Tim Cook, CEO of Apple, Bill Gates, co-founder of Microsoft, Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, and Safra Catz, CEO of Oracle. One big name absent from the dinner was Elon Musk, previously a close Trump ally and appointed to head the government-slashing Department of Government Efficiency. Musk publicly distanced himself from Trump earlier this year.

For the event, the White House Rose Garden was transformed with tables, chairs and umbrellas reminiscent of the outdoor setup at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club in Florida.

The White House has not disclosed the official agenda for the dinner, but it followed a separate meeting on artificial intelligence hosted by First Lady Melania Trump, aimed at promoting AI education for American youth.

The strong presence of Indian-American executives comes at a time when US-India ties face strains over tariffs and India’s import of Russian oil.