Dozens of executives and companies have donated to fund the construction of President Trump’s $300 million ballroom, as many of them eye favorable policy, reduced scrutiny or approval for major deals from the White House.
Donors to the ballroom — which will take the place of the White House’s East Wing — include Big Tech companies, defense contractors and other large corporations. The White House has not disclosed how much money each company donated. Mr. Trump has said construction will be funded through private donations and his own money — not taxpayer funds.
CBS News reviewed a list of 37 donors provided by the White House, which included tech firms like Google and Amazon and crypto companies like Ripple and Coinbase. Others that contributed to the project include Nvidia, Susquehanna International Group and ExtremityCare, according to sources familiar with the matter. The president hosted a dinner last week thanking donors, although not everyone invited to the dinner contributed.
Asked for comment on whether these donations present any conflicts, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt wrote in a statement to CBS News: “The same critics who are wrongly claiming there are conflicts of interests, would complain if taxpayers were footing the bill.”
“The donors for the White House ballroom project represent a wide array of great American companies and generous individuals, all of whom are contributing to make the People’s House better for generations to come,” she added.
Here’s a closer look at what some of the donors and dinner guests stand to gain from federal policy or have already received from the administration.
Big Tech and telecom
Tech giants Google, Palantir, Amazon and Microsoft, as well as cell phone carrier T-Mobile, were among the donors listed by the White House.
YouTube, owned by Google, agreed to pay $22 million toward the ballroom project as part of a legal settlement in a case Mr. Trump brought against the company for temporarily removing him from the platform after the 2021 Capitol riot.
Software company Palantir has been awarded more than $800 million across several government contracts in fiscal year 2025, more than in any prior year, according to federal contract data. The Trump administration has also made Palantir a key player in managing and consolidating data about Americans between federal agencies, The New York Times reported.
Amazon and Microsoft also have each received hundreds of millions in government contracts, federal data show.
T-Mobile may stand to benefit from a Trump Organization-linked mobile phone and cell service company, something House Democrats have expressed conflict-of-interest concerns over. The company isn’t run by the Trump Organization, but is licensing the president’s name. The Trump Mobile network says it is run on Liberty Mobile Wireless, a mobile virtual network operator that rents bandwidth from major carriers like T-Mobile.
In a statement to CBS News, a T-Mobile spokesperson said the company donated to the Trust for the National Mall, which is handling ballroom donations, but has “no role in the use of those funds or decisions related to the construction of the ballroom.” The spokesperson did not comment on the Trump-linked cell service company.
Representatives from Nvidia, one of the world’s leading developers of advanced microchips, were among dozens of donors invited to Mr. Trump’s thank-you dinner, according to a guest list obtained by CBS News.
The Trump administration granted Nvidia export licenses to send certain chips to China in exchange for 15% of the revenues, as the company’s CEO presses for greater access to the Chinese market. Nvidia is also waiting for the administration’s full approval to ship hundreds of thousands of its artificial intelligence chips to the United Arab Emirates annually, though the administration gave the company permission to export to American businesses operating in the Gulf country earlier this month, according to Bloomberg.
Jeff Yass, who cofounded the trading firm Susquehanna International Group and invested in TikTok, was also on the guest list. Yass has given more than $16 million to super PAC MAGA Inc. this year. In his first term, Mr. Trump sought to ban TikTok, but he reversed course this year, signing an order last month to keep TikTok operating in the U.S. with a slate of American investors. Meanwhile, Yass’s wealth has surged by billions of dollars this year, according to estimates by Bloomberg and Forbes.
Cryptocurrency
Some of the biggest names in crypto also made donations to Mr. Trump’s ballroom, according to the White House’s list of donors. The Trump administration has vowed to make the U.S. the “crypto capital of the world,” as the president’s family has made billions on their own crypto ventures.
A company spokesman confirmed Coinbase, the largest U.S. cryptocurrency exchange, made a donation. The company is seeking Securities and Exchange Commission approval to offer blockchain-based stocks. It also faces an SEC investigation started under former President Joe Biden into whether it misstated its user numbers in past financial disclosures, The New York Times reported. Earlier this year, the SEC withdrew a separate lawsuit against Coinbase, shortly after the company donated $1 million to Mr. Trump’s inauguration.
Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, twin brothers who own crypto exchange Gemini, also helped pay for the event space. In February, the SEC closed a long-running investigation into their crypto exchange, Cameron Winklevoss announced on X, after the Winklevoss twins donated more than $2 million to MAGA Inc. one month prior. In July, the brothers successfully lobbied Mr. Trump to withdraw his original nominee to run the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which regulates crypto, according to Politico.
The crypto company Ripple also donated. Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse has openly expressed his support for the current administration’s cryptocurrency policies, and Mr. Trump has promoted its coin, XRP, as one of the coins that a planned U.S. government-controlled crypto reserve should include.
Defense and federal contractors
Lockheed Martin donated over $10 million to Mr. Trump’s ballroom, according to company sources. The defense contractor is typically awarded tens of billions annually in federal contracts.
Booz Allen Hamilton also made a donation to the president’s event space. The consulting firm typically generates 98% of its annual revenue from contracts with the U.S. government, but it has suffered from the Trump administration’s crackdown on federal spending. Its government contracts shrunk by 20% in the fiscal year 2025, and its stock price has plunged 46% since Mr. Trump’s reelection.
Media
Comcast has expressed interest in acquiring Warner Bros. Discovery, Bloomberg reported, but its merger would face federal scrutiny. The Department of Justice blocked a Comcast-Time Warner Cable merger in 2015, because it would have made the conglomerate an “unavoidable gatekeeper” for Internet-based services. Comcast doesn’t historically have the favor of the president; in April on Truth Social, Trump called Comcast, which owns NBC and is spinning off MSNBC, a “disgrace to the integrity of broadcasting.”
Medical
Biotech company ExtremityCare’s CEOs were on the thank-you dinner guest list. The company, which makes costly human cell and tissue medical products, previously donated $5 million to MAGA Inc. Soon after the donation, the Trump administration moved to delay a Biden administration plan to limit Medicare’s coverage of the company’s “skin substitute” bandages.
CBS News has requested comment from the companies listed in this story.
Source link
