UFC CEO Dana White joins Meta’s board of directors : NPR

Dana White, the Final Preventing Championship president and supporter of President-elect Donald Trump, is becoming a member of the board of Fb and Instagram dad or mum firm Meta.

White’s election as a Meta director two weeks earlier than Trump takes workplace comes as Silicon Valley is courting the incoming administration, following what has been a frosty relationship with Trump and his allies, who’ve lengthy accused tech platforms together with Meta of anti-conservative bias.

Meta, Amazon, and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman have each donated $1 million to Trump’s inauguration fund. Zuckerberg is among the many tech titans who’ve dined with the president-elect at Mar-a-Lago for the reason that election. Final week Meta named Joel Kaplan, a veteran firm govt and Republican who as soon as labored in George W. Bush’s White Home, its head of world coverage.

White is a longtime buddy of Trump who spoke at the Republican National Convention this summer season and appeared in Trump’s first TikTok video. On election evening, White joined Trump on stage at his victory occasion, thanking most of the podcasters and online influencers who, together with UFC, have been credited with boosting the president-elect’s appeal among young men.

White and Zuckerberg, who has trained as a mixed martial arts fighter, have additionally turn into pleasant. Zuckerberg praised White for constructing UFC into “probably the most helpful, quickest rising, and hottest sports activities enterprises on the earth” in a Facebook post on Monday. “I’ve admired him as an entrepreneur and his capability to construct such a beloved model,” Zuckerberg continued.

“I’ve by no means been fascinated with becoming a member of a board of administrators till I obtained the supply to hitch Meta’s board. I’m an enormous believer that social media and AI are the longer term,” White stated in a statement. White has talked with Zuckerberg about utilizing synthetic intelligence to enhance UFC rankings, ESPN reported in October.

Meta additionally named as administrators John Elkann, CEO of the European funding agency Ekon and govt chairman of carmakers Stellantis and Ferrari, and Charlie Songhurst, a tech investor who beforehand led company technique at Microsoft. Songhurst joined a bunch advising Meta on AI final 12 months.

The additions develop Meta’s board from 10 to 13 administrators, together with Zuckerberg, who serves as chair.

“Now we have large alternatives forward in AI, wearables, and the way forward for social media, and our board will assist us obtain our imaginative and prescient,” Zuckerberg wrote in his Fb put up saying the brand new members.