Elon Musk left out of dinner between Trump and top tech leaders at White House

President Donald Trump will host two dozen top business and tech leaders Thursday in the newly renovated White House Rose Garden, with X owner Elon Musk conspicuously absent. As The Hill reported Wednesday, the guest list for the dinner includes OpenAI founder Sam Altman, Microsoft founder Bill Gates, Apple CEO Tim Cook and even Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg. The meeting will represent the first event to be held in the renovated White House space.

Others attending the event include OpenAI president Greg Brockman; Micron Technology CEO Sanjay Mehrotra; Blue Origin CEO David Limp; Oracle CEO Safra Catz; Google CEO Sundar Pichai; Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella; Tibco founder Vivek Ranadive; and Palantir chief technology officer Shyam Sankar.

While the guest list does not include Musk, it is not known whether the founder of X and former member of the Trump Administration did not want to attend, or whether he was directly excluded from the event. Even on the same day the list was published, the Republican front-runner spoke about the Tesla founder during an interview with conservative commentator Scott Jennings. "I liked him, I always liked him, I like him now. He's a man of common sense. He's a good man. He got off the reservation incorrectly, and that's okay because, you know, it's just one of those things. But he's a good person," Trump noted.

At another point in the interview, Jennings explained that while Musk and Trump starred in a fierce clash between the two shortly after the X owner left the Republican administration, he would like to see a public reconciliation that would put an end to that episode. "These are two brilliant men and great Americans. I, like millions of others, really would love to see them get the band back together soon."

The dinner between the president and the tech and business leaders will take place after a separate White House event on artificial intelligence, hosted by first lady Melania Trump.