UFC CEO Dana White will join Meta's board of directors. announced today. Adding mixed martial arts impresario jives with Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg. well-documented UFC fandombut also a broader strategy that Meta appears to be pursuing in the run-up to Trump's second term: moving to the right.
However, this does not mean that White's position on the board is typical. The majority of Meta's current board of directors work in the technology industry. The two members Meta adds along with White, John Elkann and Charlie Songhurst, fit the usual social network requirements. In Meta's press release, White might say that he “firmly believes that social media and artificial intelligence are the future,” but the company he keeps is probably the more important reason he's joining now.
Dana White and President-elect Donald Trump we've been friends for many years. White supported Trump's reelection campaign, and the UFC generally suits his strongman tastes. White's addition to the board not only improves Zuckerberg's self-esteem, but also gives him access to the new Trump administration. The elected president can at some point I thought that Zuckerberg should “spend the rest of his life in prison,” but the Meta CEO is doing everything in his power to woo him.
Zuckerberg visited Mar-a-Lago in November 2024 to have dinner with Trump, one of several tech CEOs to do so. Meta is also adjusting its executive ranks to better work with the Conservative government. Former Global President Nick Clegg announced he was resigning just last week he was replaced by Meta's most prominent Republican leader, Joel Kaplan. Kaplan's credits include an eight-year stint in the Bush administration. Zuckerberg has been in UFC mode for a while now, and it looks like for at least the next four years, Meta will be in it too.