Trump meets with 13 tech industry honchos.
AB Wire
Microsoft’s chief executive Satya Nadella brought along a surprising product along with him at his and other tech industry honchos’ meeting with president-elect Donald Trump, at the Trump Tower in New York City, on Wednesday: a Surface Pen.
Microsoft has advertised the Surface Pen as: ‘Write, draw, or mark-up documents digitally. It feels as natural as pen on paper; with precision ink on one end and an eraser on the other. The new Surface Pen works with Surface Book, Surface Pro 4, Surface Pro 3, and Surface 3.’ It retails for around $60.
Nadella – the only Indian American – was among 13 tech industry heads who met with Trump. Accompanying Nadella was chief legal officer Brad Smith, reported Venture Beat, who reported on the Surface Pen.
The Wall Street Journal reported Trump struck a conciliatory tone at the meeting, telling Silicon Valley leaders that his goal is “to help you folks do well.”
“We want you to keep going with the incredible innovation. There’s nobody like you in the world.…Anything we can do to help this go along, we’re going to be there for you,” he told the tech executives, according to a video of the start of the meeting. “You call my people, you call me. It doesn’t make any difference. We have no formal chain of command around here.”
Trump also told the executives that he would “do fair-trade deals” and said he was “going to make it a lot easier for you to trade across borders because there are a lot of restrictions, a lot of problems.” He added, “If you have any ideas on that, that would be great.” Mr. Trump has been a persistent critic of past trade deals, including the pending Trans Pacific Partnership.
Thirteen tech executives attended the meeting at Trump Tower, including Apple Inc. Chief Executive Tim Cook; Amazon.com Inc. CEO Jeff Bezos; Facebook Inc. Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg; Tesla Motors Inc. CEO Elon Musk; the CEO and chairman of Google parent Alphabet Inc., Larry Page and Eric Schmidt; and the CEO and president of Microsoft Corp., Nadella and Smith. The CEOs of Intel Corp., International Business Machines Corp., Oracle Corp., Cisco Systems Inc. and Palantir Technologies Inc. also attended.
Another dozen people joined from Mr. Trump’s team, including Vice President-elect Mike Pence; billionaire investor and Trump adviser Peter Thiel; incoming White House chief of staff Reince Priebus; Trump adviser Steve Bannon; Commerce Secretary-designate Wilbur Ross; and Mr. Trump’s three adult children and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner.