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Graham published a widely-read essay titled 'The Origins of Wokeness' that described 'wokeness' as a 'mind virus' emerging from universities. The essay targeted BLM, Me Too movement, and DEI initiatives, and suggested organizations remove 'aggressively conventional-minded people.' Critics noted he erased the term's Black vernacular origins. A transgender YC alum said the essay 'creates the permission structure for people to discriminate against me.'

In January 2025, Mullenweg deactivated WordPress.org accounts of several community members, including two planning to fork WordPress and the CEO of the WP Community Collective nonprofit. He also dissolved the WordPress sustainability team after learning it existed. Mullenweg acknowledged the lawsuits 'could potentially bankrupt me or force the closure of WordPress.org.'

HP Inc made a contribution to Donald Trump's inauguration, joining Microsoft, Amazon, and other major technology companies. An HP spokesperson confirmed the company was giving funds without disclosing the sum. HP CEO Enrique Lores expressed willingness to 'collaborate with the new administration' on tariffs.

Meta announced a major overhaul of its DEI initiatives in January 2025. The company eliminated its dedicated DEI team, ended equity and inclusion programs, stopped representation goals, ceased diverse supplier sourcing requirements, and ended the 'diverse slate approach' in hiring. VP of HR Janelle Gale cited the changing legal and policy landscape around DEI in the United States.

Microsoft donated $1 million to Donald Trump's 2025 presidential inauguration fund, joining other major tech companies in contributing to the incoming administration.

On January 7, 2025, Meta announced it would end its third-party fact-checking program on Facebook and Instagram, replacing it with a community notes system similar to X (formerly Twitter). CEO Mark Zuckerberg stated fact-checkers had been 'too politically biased' and called for reducing 'censorship'. The change was announced two weeks before Trump's second inauguration.

On January 7, 2025, as part of broader content moderation changes, Meta updated its Community Standards to expressly permit users to describe LGBTQ+ people as mentally ill or abnormal and to call for their exclusion from professions, public spaces, and society based on sexual orientation and gender identity.

Google donated $1 million to Donald Trump's 2025 presidential inauguration fund, joining other major tech companies in contributing to the incoming administration's celebration.

On January 6, 2025, the US Department of Defense added Tencent to its list of 'Chinese Military Companies' alongside other tech firms. The designation, while not imposing direct sanctions, signals US government concerns about Tencent's alleged ties to China's military and can affect investor sentiment and business relationships with US entities.

On January 6, 2025, Meta announced the appointment of Dana White, CEO of UFC and a prominent Trump supporter who played a key role in Trump's 2024 reelection campaign, to its board of directors. The appointment came amid Meta's broader outreach to the incoming Trump administration.

In January 2025, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman made a personal $1 million donation to Trump's inauguration fund (Jan 3), attended the inauguration ceremony at the Capitol (Jan 20), and the next day stood alongside President Trump at a White House press conference to announce Stargate, a joint venture with Oracle and SoftBank planning to invest up to $500 billion in AI infrastructure. This marked a stark contrast to Altman's 2016 blog post comparing Trump to Hitler.

Apple CEO Tim Cook made a personal donation of $1 million to Donald Trump's 2025 inauguration fund. This was a personal contribution from Cook, not a corporate donation from Apple.

Microsoft under Satya Nadella removed diversity and inclusion from employee performance evaluations (ending a 5-year practice), laid off the DEI team in July 2024, and discontinued the annual diversity report in 2025. This reversed Nadella's 2020 pledge of $150M for D&I and a commitment to double Black senior leadership by 2025.

Monzo achieved 50% women representation on its board (66.6% women) and executive committee (33.3% women). The median gender pay gap narrowed from 14.3% in 2020 to 6.3% in 2024. Monzo became the first UK bank to introduce dedicated paid leave for pregnancy loss and fertility treatments. Won Company of the Year at the 2025 British Diversity Awards.

Unlike many tech companies that rolled back DEI programs in 2024-2025, Airbnb maintained its diversity commitments. The company's 2025 goals include 20% underrepresented minorities in US workforce and 50% women globally. A portion of executive team compensation is tied to diversity performance. Airbnb.org committed that by end of 2025, at least 33% of US workers will be underrepresented minorities.

AWS serves as the primary cloud infrastructure for DHS and ICE, hosting the Palantir-designed Investigative Case Management system used for deportation targeting, biometric data for 230 million individuals, and at least 62% of CBP's systems. Palantir pays AWS approximately $600,000/month. Employee protests dating to 2018 have called for ending ICE contracts.

PayPal donated $250,000 to Trump's 2025 Presidential Inaugural Committee, contributing to the record $251.4 million raised for the inauguration.

In 2025, Joe Gebbia donated $1 million to the gubernatorial campaign of Greg Abbott. Gebbia has said his politics have shifted toward the Republican Party over time. In the 2024 presidential election, he voted for Donald Trump, despite donating $20,000 to Biden's re-election bid in 2023.

Tan announced he was stepping back from local San Francisco political group GrowSF to 'focus on DC this year.' In interviews, he praised Trump's antitrust picks and expressed hope that J.D. Vance would have 'a really deep influence on what the Trump Administration does.'

In 2025, Sony Interactive Entertainment received a 100/100 score on the Human Rights Campaign Foundation Corporate Equality Index, being named a Best Place to Work for LGBTQ+ equality. Sony maintained its employee resource networks including Pride@PlayStation and expanded DEI specialist hiring, while many other tech companies rolled back DEI initiatives.

Tencent filed legal action against FreeWeChat, a website that archives censored WeChat content to preserve deleted posts and expose censorship patterns. The lawsuit seeks to shut down the service, which researchers and journalists have used to document Tencent's content moderation practices and preserve information that would otherwise be permanently removed.

Tencent implemented a mandatory 6PM clock-out policy, requiring employees to leave the office by 6PM on Wednesdays. This represents a significant shift away from the '996' culture (9am-9pm, 6 days a week) that has been endemic in Chinese tech. The policy came after Chinese courts ruled 996 schedules illegal and following increased government pressure on tech companies to improve working conditions.

Under Nadella's leadership, Microsoft laid off over 15,000 people in 2025 while recording record revenues and profits for its fiscal year ending June 2025, citing AI-driven restructuring. The layoffs occurred as the company invested heavily in AI infrastructure and partnerships.

In January 2025, Samsung agreed to recognize an independent workers' union at its Chennai, India factory following a month-long strike by over 1,000 workers. The workers had demanded union recognition, higher wages, and better working conditions. The resolution marked a shift from Samsung's historically anti-union stance.

Samsung Electronics donated $315,000 to Donald Trump's 2025 presidential inauguration fund. The donation was part of broader tech industry contributions to the incoming administration, though notably smaller than the $1M+ donations from US tech giants.

Between 2008 and April 2025, Immigration and Customs Enforcement awarded Cellebrite at least 213 contracts worth over $48.6 million for UFED phone extraction technology. A new $11 million contract was signed in 2025. CBP uses Cellebrite to perform warrantless searches at the border. The ACLU filed suit in 2017 claiming searches violated First and Fourth Amendment rights.

Claude is not open source - source code, training datasets, and detailed architecture are not publicly available. Critics note contradiction between touting societal benefits while not open-sourcing most powerful models.

Launched Anthropic's Transparency Hub with periodic reports on banned accounts, account appeals, appeal overturns, NCMEC reports, and government request data.

Amazon building 1,200-acre data center complex in Indiana for Anthropic's AI (30 buildings, 2.2 GW capacity). Three-quarters of the new power plants will be fueled by natural gas. Anthropic advocated for US to build additional 50 GW of dedicated power by 2027.

Anthropic is the only frontier AI company to restrict selling AI services to PRC-controlled companies, forgoing significant short-term revenue. At Davos 2026, Amodei likened U.S. allowing Nvidia to sell advanced chips to China as 'selling nuclear weapons to North Korea.'