Elon Musk has let slip President Donald Trump’s two-tier system for ranking CEOs.
The president departed for China on Tuesday and is expected to land in Beijing on Wednesday for a summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping. War, trade, and artificial intelligence are expected to be on the agenda.
To bolster his ranks on the latter, Trump is bringing a crack squad of tech experts with him on the trip.
In a Truth Social Post on Tuesday, the 79-year-old said the corporate entourage includes some of the biggest names in American business, including Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, Tesla and SpaceX boss Elon Musk, outgoing Apple CEO Tim Cook—whom he called “Tim Apple”—alongside BlackRock chief executive Larry Fink and Blackstone CEO Stephen Schwarzman.
Also in the mix were Boeing CEO Kelly Ortberg, Cargill CEO Brian Sikes, Citigroup CEO Jane Fraser, GE Aerospace CEO Larry Culp, Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon, Micron Technology CEO Sanjay Mehrotra, and Qualcomm chief executive Cristiano Amon.
But it was Musk who revealed the secret hierarchy. “Just Jensen and I are on AF1,” he wrote on X from the skies, powered by his satellite company Starlink.
In his post, Trump said there were “many others journeying to the Great Country of China where I will be asking President Xi, a Leader of extraordinary distinction, to ‘open up’ China so that these brilliant people can work their magic.”
At least eight of the listed companies—or the executives personally—have publicly donated to, financially backed, or otherwise visibly supported Trump during his second term or 2025 inauguration cycle. However, only Musk appeared to get a seat on Air Force One without a fuss.
Ndivia’s Huang had a more complicated route to sit alongside Trump. At first, he was notably missing from the list of executives. CNBC’s Jim Cramer openly raised the omission, effectively spotlighting that the most important AI executive in the world had been left off the guest list.
“We should let the president announce whatever he decides to announce,” Huang responded, before adding that “if invited, it would be a privilege” and “a great honor to represent the United States.”
According to Politico, Trump reacted to the coverage surrounding Huang’s absence. The Daily Wire later reported that Trump personally called Huang on Tuesday with a last-minute invitation after the snub story gained traction.
But by that point, Air Force One had already departed Joint Base Andrews in Maryland. The aircraft stopped in Anchorage, Alaska, to refuel. Huang then joined the delegation there rather than departing with the original group from Washington, D.C.
After Huang boarded, Trump went into cleanup mode on Truth Social. He attacked CNBC’s reporting as “FAKE NEWS,” insisted Huang had been invited all along, and declared that the Nvidia boss was “currently on Air Force One.”
Huang’s importance emanates from the fact that Nvidia makes the dominant Graphics Processing Units used to train and run modern AI systems. A GPU is a type of computer processor designed to handle many calculations simultaneously.
The company has effectively become a bottleneck supplier for the entire AI industry, thereby being dragged into U.S.–China tech tensions. By extension, this suggests that leaving Huang off AF1 could have been a huge misstep by the Trump administration.
Musk, meanwhile, retained his seat even after an explosive fallout with Trump last year. What started as a disagreement over the president’s signature spending bill snowballed into a nasty slugfest, culminating in Musk declaring that Trump’s name was all over the Epstein Files.
Trump dismissed the billionaire tech tycoon as “off the rails,” and their relationship appeared to be dead. However, it was resurrected, and Musk will now be part of the tech delegation whose aim is to strengthen ties with a great superpower.
“We’re the two superpowers,” Trump told reporters as he departed the White House on Tuesday. “We’re the strongest nation on Earth in terms of military. China’s considered second.”
