President Donald Trump’s 2025 inauguration didn’t just break fundraising records, it fundamentally redefined them, spotlighting the growing role of the biggest donors. Individuals and corporations, many of which stand to benefit from the actions of the new administration, contributed an unprecedented number of seven-figure checks.
The inaugural committee received more than $245 million in contributions, doubling Trump’s own record-setting $88 million inauguration in 2017 and quadrupling the $61.8 million raised by Joe Biden’s inaugural committee in 2021, when festivities were limited by the Covid-19 pandemic. No previous inaugural committee since at least 1973, even accounting for recent inflation, has come close to the fundraising scale of this year’s inauguration.
While the inauguration itself is a government-run event, newly elected presidents hold many accompanying events that are funded through private donations raised by lightly regulated inaugural committees. Unlike campaign committees, inaugural committees are not subject to contribution limits and have few restrictions imposed by federal law. Inaugurations can legally take donations of unlimited sums from individuals, corporations, and unions, so long as donors are not foreign nationals and certain disclosure rules are followed. Inaugural committees often impose their own caps on contributions, but Trump’s 2025 inaugural committee imposed no such limits.
The following analysis offers the first comprehensive examination of this year’s inaugural finances that includes amended filings and refunds, documenting the inaugural fund’s reliance on its biggest donors. This analysis breaks down funding by major industries, showing that tech interests, including cryptocurrency companies, were far and away the largest source of money. It also notes examples of substantial donations coinciding with advantageous policy or personnel decisions by the Trump administration, as well as an unprecedented number of refunds and millions of dollars in donations for which the true sources are not entirely clear.