Tesla and SpaceX chairman and CEO Elon Musk and Uber CEO and co-founder Travis Kalanick will join President-elect Donald Trump’s strategic and policy forum, according to a Trump transition press release Wednesday.
Musk and Kalanick will be joining a forum filled with business leaders from investment firms and companies such as Wal-Mart and Walt Disney. Trump’s transition team also announced Wednesday that PepsiCo CEO and chairman Indra Nooyi would be joining the forum.
The addition of the Silicon Valley business leaders to the group is significant because Trump had received criticism for their absence from the forum. The New York Times wrote on Dec. 2 “Silicon Valley Chiefs Notably Absent From Trump’s Cabinet of Business Advisers.”
Trump said in a statement: “America has the most innovative and vibrant companies in the world, and the pioneering CEOs joining this Forum today are at the top of their fields.My Administration is going to work together with the private sector to improve the business climate and make it attractive for firms to create new jobs across the United States from Silicon Valley to the heartland.”
The president-elect is meeting Wednesday afternoon with leaders at the largest tech companies including Apple and Facebook.
