Six of the 10 richest people on the planet had a common destination in recent months: Palm Beach International Airport.
Private jet records, compiled by Bloomberg News using aviation data platform JetSpy, provide a window into how nearby Mar-a-Lago — Donald Trump’s private Palm Beach club — has become a new center of power as the president-elect gleefully receives titans of industry ahead of his second term.
As the planes fly in from Hawaii, California, Washington, Texas and even nearby Miami, information has trickled in about their billionaire owners taking meetings with Trump.
Some of the visitors are tied to his administration, while others are aligning themselves with the president-elect for the first time in an attempt to jockey favor with a man who’s been known to reward allies and punish enemies. The six richest billionaires to have landed at PBI — as the South Florida airport is known — did so 25 times since November, compared with a collective 10 trips a year earlier, JetSpy records show.
Ahead of Monday’s inauguration, here’s a list of billionaires who’ve made the pilgrimage to Palm Beach since Election Day and their net worth, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
Mark Zuckerberg
Net worth: $217 billion
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
Meta Platforms Inc. co-founder Mark Zuckerberg, who didn’t back a candidate in this year’s presidential election and banned Trump from his social media platforms after the 2021 Capitol riot, made the trip to Mar-a-Lago from his Hawaii compound in late November.
Records show Zuckerberg’s jet landed at PBI the evening of Nov. 26 and left about a day later, in the early hours of Thanksgiving, headed back to Kauai. Meta confirmed Zuckerberg had dinner with Trump, saying in a statement in November that, “Mark was grateful for the invitation to join President Trump for dinner and the opportunity to meet with members of his team about the incoming administration.”
A little over a month later, Zuckerberg’s company announced via Fox & Friends, Trump’s favorite TV news show, that it intends to remove fact-checkers from its social media sites, a concession to Trump, who has long criticized such scrutiny. Zuckerberg’s jet landed again at PBI last week for another meeting at Mar-a-Lago after a pit stop in Austin for an interview with podcaster Joe Rogan.
“The American technology industry is a bright spot in the American economy,” Zuckerberg, 40, told Rogan. “It’s one of the things I’m optimistic about with President Trump. I think he just wants America to win.”
Sergey Brin
Net worth: $163 billion
In mid-December, a few weeks after Zuckerberg’s first visit, Alphabet Inc. co-founder Sergey Brin flew across the country to visit Trump. It was confirmed that Brin, 51, who earlier described Trump’s first election win as “deeply offensive,” had dinner with the president-elect and Alphabet Chief Executive Officer Sundar Pichai at Mar-a-Lago.
Jet records show his plane stayed in Palm Beach for three days, before flying back to San Jose, California, following a short stop in Miami. A spokesperson for Brin declined to comment. Alphabet’s Google has since donated $1 million to Trump’s inaugural committee.
Jeff Bezos
Net worth: $245 billion
Jeff Bezos
The following week, Amazon.com Inc. founder Jeff Bezos, 61, the second-richest person in the world, had dinner with Trump at Mar-a-Lago. He was joined by Elon Musk, who later posted on X that “it was a great conversation.” Bezos’ jet records show the billionaire’s plane took the 15-minute flight to PBI from Miami that evening and flew back about four hours later. Amazon pledged $1 million for Trump’s inauguration and agreed to pay $40 million for a Melania Trump documentary, according to Puck News.
A political cartoonist for the Washington Post, which Bezos also owns, recently quit her job after editors rejected a cartoon that showed Bezos and other billionaires kneeling before Trump holding out bags of money. Editorial page editor David Shipley said in a statement to the Associated Press that he nixed the cartoon because the paper had just published a column on the same topic and was set to publish another.
A representative for Bezos didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Bill Gates
Net worth: $162 billion
Two days after Christmas, Bill Gates’ jet flew from Palm Springs, California, arriving at PBI around 7:30 p.m., records show. The plane took off about four hours later, headed back to Palm Springs. Trump posted on his social media site Truth Social that Gates had asked to visit, calling Mar-a-Lago the “Center of the Universe.” It’s a change for Gates, 69, who reportedly spent $50 million backing Democrat Kamala Harris and has been a vocal opponent to Trump, especially on matters of public health.
A representative for Gates didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Elon Musk
Net worth: $449 billion
Elon Musk
In between trips to Texas and California to tend to his several companies, Musk’s jets have practically lived at PBI as the billionaire has settled into Mar-a-Lago. He’s joined Trump for holidays and began laying out his plan for his newly created Department of Government Efficiency. Musk is expected to run DOGE with Vivek Ramaswamy, 39, whose private jet has also made several trips to PBI in recent months.
Musk’s planes have flown there more than a dozen times since Election Day, collectively spending about three weeks total in Palm Beach. In between, Musk, 53, has made frequent trips to Austin, where he has a compound and multiple companies; to Los Angeles, where he used to live; and to Brownsville, Texas, where SpaceX has a launch site. Trump also made a visit to Brownsville in November for one of Musk’s rocket launches.
Musk, along with Bezos and Zuckerberg, plans to attend the inauguration and will sit near cabinet officials and elected leaders, NBC News reported Tuesday.
Travis Kalanick
Net worth: $5 billion
Travis Kalanick
Several more billionaires have been named as likely collaborators on DOGE, including investor Marc Andreessen and Uber Technologies Inc. co-founder Travis Kalanick, according to the Washington Post. Kalanick’s Gulfstream G650 landed at PBI on Nov. 26, staying for about six hours before heading to a Los Angeles airport soon after Zuckerberg arrived, according to flight records. Kalanick, 48, didn’t respond to a request for comment to confirm whether he was on the plane for that trip or if he visited the club.
Larry Ellison
Net worth: $188 billion
The jet of Larry Ellison, Oracle Corp. co-founder and close friend and mentor to Musk, landed the same day as Kalanick’s plane, coming from the same Los Angeles airport. Ellison, 80, owns a resort near Mar-a-Lago, but has also spent time at the club with Musk and Trump since the election, according to the New York Times. An Oracle spokesperson didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Winklevoss Twins
Net worth: $6 billion each
Silicon Valley’s cryptocurrency community has also had a presence in Palm Beach. A Gulfstream G500 owned by Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss landed at PBI around 8:30 p.m. on Jan. 6. The same night, Trump was photographed having dinner with Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse and Ripple’s chief legal officer, Stu Alderoty.
The 41-year-old Winklevoss twins’ plane left the next morning, bound for Silicon Valley. It returned to PBI two days later and took off nearly a week later for Teterboro, New Jersey, a popular New York-area airport for private jets. While in Palm Beach, the brothers attended a $250,000-a-plate fundraiser held by Vice President-elect JD Vance, according to Politico.
A spokesperson for the Winklevoss twins declined to comment.
Gina Rinehart
Net worth: $20 billion
Mining magnate Gina Rinehart, Australia’s richest woman, made her support for Trump known with a full-page ad in the Wall Street Journal this month. “Many in Australia and around the world are given hope and much needed inspiration thanks to your election,” according to the ad, which featured a photo of Trump hugging an American flag.
Rinehart, 70, landed at PBI four times in October and November in the run-up to the election. She also joined Trump in West Palm Beach for his election victory party, alongside other billionaires including casino magnate Steve Wynn, who’s worth $5 billion. She returned to PBI this week ahead of the inauguration. A spokesperson for Rinehart declined to comment.
Howard Lutnick
Net worth: $2 billion
Other billionaires who have been given formal and informal roles in the administration have been taking trips to the club, including Cantor Fitzgerald CEO Howard Lutnick, 63, co-chair of the Trump-Vance transition team and current nominee for commerce secretary. His jet has touched down at PBI nearly a dozen times since Election Day, making frequent runs between Palm Beach, Washington and New York.
A Cantor Fitzgerald spokesperson declined to comment.
Patrick Soon-Shiong
Net worth: $11 billion
Pharmaceutical billionaire Patrick Soon-Shiong’s jet has made two trips to PBI since Election Day: one early last month and another this week, both times staying less than a day. The Dec. 2 trip was the first time Soon-Shiong's plane had traveled to PBI since at least 2019, when JetSpy began keeping records. It's unclear whether Soon-Shiong was on the plane or visited Mar-a-Lago during the two trips.
Soon-Shiong, 72, who also owns the Los Angeles Times, blocked the newspaper's editorial board from endorsing Kamala Harris for president in October, opting instead to back neither candidate. Two weeks after his plane touched down last month at PBI, Soon-Shiong asked his editorial board to “take a break” from writing about Trump, according to published reports.
A Times representative didn’t respond to a request for comment, while a spokesperson for NantWorks, one of the billionaire’s companies, declined to comment.
Tilman Fertitta
Net worth: $16 billion
The jet of restaurant and casino billionaire Tilman Fertitta, 67, who’s been named ambassador to Italy, landed at PBI on the afternoon of Jan. 5. It took off for Greenland less than 12 hours later, the day before Trump said he wouldn’t rule out military force to take the Danish sovereign territory.
Trump’s plane, carrying his eldest son Don Jr., arrived in Greenland the next day. After a few hours spent in the autonomous territory, both of their jets took off within 30 minutes of each other and returned to PBI. A spokesperson for Fertitta, the CEO of Houston-based Landry’s Inc., didn’t respond to requests for comment.
Fertitta, Zuckerberg and billionaire Miriam Adelson, majority shareholder of casino operator Las Vegas Sands Inc., are among those hosting a black-tie reception for Trump on inauguration day.
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