Musk Joined Call Between Trump, Google CEO

When Google CEO Sundar Pichai called Donald Trump to congratulate the president-elect on winning the election, a guest was on the line: Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla, xAI and other companies, according to two people familiar with the situation.

Musk’s appearance took Pichai by surprise, one of these people said.

Musk’s involvement in the call, which hasn’t been previously reported, shows the influence he could wield next year as major technology companies such as Google talk to Trump on everything from antitrust penalties and social media censorship to energy-related rules that could help them develop data centers for artificial intelligence.

Musk’s firms compete with Google in various industries, including AI and self-driving car technology.

He recently criticized Google for what he believes is liberal bias in how the company presents certain search results, which he alleged was part of a “massive far left censorship” there. Trump, too, has made similar criticisms and even threatened to criminally prosecute the company if he was elected, though he has softened his rhetoric in recent weeks.

The Justice Department, meanwhile, has been preparing to ask a federal judge to break up Google after the judge ruled the company is an illegal monopoly. The case is scheduled to finish next year.

Musk has become a close consigliere to Trump in mapping out his second presidential administration after spending big money to help get him elected. Musk reportedly joined Trump’s call with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky and met with Iran’s ambassador to the United Nations in the days after the election.

Musk’s addition to the conversation between Trump and Pichai is the first known example of Musk joining calls between Trump and other tech leaders. Musk happened to be in the room when Pichai made the call, said one of the people.

“President Trump has received congratulatory calls from business and tech leaders from across all industries for his historic victory,” said Steven Cheung, a spokesperson for Trump. “As he has said multiple times throughout the campaign, President Trump has maintained contact with these leaders in order to ensure American jobs and workers are protected.”

Musk has senior leadership positions at six businesses in addition to his appointment last week to co-lead a new “Department of Government Efficiency” that will seek to cut federal spending.

And Musk has been turning X into more of a video site, putting it in more direct competition with Google’s YouTube, though the two companies also work together in other ways.

On Election Day, Musk reposted a tweet pointing out that Google shows a “Where to Vote” section for the query “where can i vote for harris” but not for “where can i vote for trump.” Google said that the Harris search triggered a map because it was a county in Texas, leading Musk to thank Google for the clarification.

In July, Musk also amplified a claim that Google was biased against Trump because Google searches for “assassination attempt of” and “president donald” didn’t show Trump in the autocomplete suggestions, according to screenshots he reposted. Musk called it a “search ban” against Trump and suggested that it could be election interference.

Google said that the results reflected outdated systems related to political violence and a bug that affected autocomplete results for several past presidents, and that Google made improvements to both of those systems.

Trump himself has made similar claims in the past. In September, he said in a post on Truth Social that he would prosecute Google for election interference for displaying only “bad stories” about him, while showing only “good stories” about Democratic nominee Kamala Harris.

More recently, though, Trump has appeared more favorable to Google, saying that Google was treating him “much better.” In October, Trump told podcaster Joe Rogan that Pichai called him to say that Trump’s recent appearance at McDonald’s—where he briefly helped make fries—was “one of the biggest things we’ve had on Google.”

He also said in October that he would not break up Google if he won the election and said that “China is afraid of Google.”

Instead, he said that he would seek to make sure Google’s behavior was “more fair.”