The Met Gala Enters Its Billionaire Season with Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sánchez

Official hosts for Monday’s Met Gala include Beyoncé, Nicole Kidman, Venus Williams, and Anna Wintour. However, the star-studded team is reserved for “seats of honor,” a headline that has drawn a lot of attention this year. Instead of designers, actors, musicians or athletes, the roles went to billionaire Jeff Bezos and his wife, Lauren Sánchez Bezos.

It’s not the first time members of the tech elite have appeared at the Met Gala—Bezos himself attended in 2012, 2019 and 2024. But the prominence of her involvement this year has sparked a wave of criticism, highlighting Silicon Valley’s increasingly influential role in fashion’s biggest night.

The growing relationship between the Met Gala and the management of technology is “a new situation in terms of the wider history of the gala, which was really about fashion,” Deirdre Clemente, a fashion historian at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, told the Observer.

Founded in 1948 by publicist Eleanor Lambert, the Met Gala began as a fundraiser for the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute, which was attended primarily by New York City residents. It was very different from today’s global spectacle. The shift toward celebrity increased in the 1970s under Vogue editor-in-chief Diana Vreeland, and by the time Wintour took over as chair in 1995, the event was well on its way to becoming a cultural juggernaut. (Wintour recently stepped down as editor-in-chief of Vogue US but remains its global editorial director.)

As the Met Gala’s profile has risen, so has its admission price. Tickets—available only to Wintour-approved guests—go for $100,000, while tables start at $350,000. As technology companies have amassed vast fortunes, they have stepped in to fit the bill for cultural cachet. Buyers at this year’s table reportedly include Amazon, OpenAI, Meta and Snap.

“I call it the ‘Tech Gala,’ because there’s been a lot of technology involved in the last decade,” Amy Odell, author of the 2022 Wintour biography. Annahe told the Observer. “Over the years, the price of admission has been so high that it’s like, who else can afford it?”

Bezos, the founder of Amazon, and Sánchez Bezos also serve as lead sponsors of this year’s event. But it was the announcement of their roles as honorary chairs in February that caused a stir. Although Wintour defended Sánchez Bezos as “a wonderful asset to the museum and event” in a recent CNN interview, the criticism continued to grow. An anti-billionaire activist group known as “Everybody Hates Elon,” has even plastered New York City with signs calling for a boycott.

However, for some viewers, the presence of the richest figures represents a slight departure from the gala’s roots. “When you’re talking about fundraising, invite people who have a lot of money,” Adrienne Jones, a fashion professor at the Pratt Institute, told the Observer. “Who else would invite him to become an honorary chair but one of the richest men in the world?”

Silicon Valley’s growing presence at the Met Gala has been building for years. Amazon sponsored the event in 2012, followed by Apple in 2016. TikTok supported the gala in 2022, the same year OpenAI created an AI installation for the show alongside the Costume Institute. Attendees included not only Bezos but also Elon Musk, Tim Cook and Sergey Brin.

In 2022, Wintour even invited Sam Bankman-Fried, the founder of FTX who was later convicted of fraud, to attend and sponsor the event. She eventually canceled at the last minute, reportedly to the dismay of Wintour’s team, according to Michael Lewis’ 2023 book. Endless Travel.

Despite occasional conflicts, technology companies are always willing to participate. A six-figure sum is “a drop in the bucket for them,” Odell said. “What they get in return is very important, which is to be seen as attractive and cool and get this kind of exposure to a large female audience.”

However, this year’s reversal indicates a change in public sentiment. Critics are not just responding to the presence of tech but to Bezos and Sánchez Bezos “front and center in this,” said Jones, pointing to growing concerns about wealth inequality and the impact of AI on workers.

Whether that setback will change the Met Gala’s reliance on Silicon Valley remains to be seen. “They’ve opened the door for Silicon Valley to now be a part of this—and the money they’re bringing with them,” said Jones.