The Met Gala Is Entering Its Billionaire Era With Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sánchez

The official co-chairs of Monday’s Met Gala include Beyoncé, Nicole Kidman, Venus Williams, and, of course, Anna Wintour. Yet the star-studded lineup has been overshadowed by the event’s “honorary chairs,” a largely ceremonial title that has drawn outsized attention this year. Instead of designers, actors, musicians or athletes, the roles have gone to billionaires Jeff Bezos and his wife, Lauren Sánchez Bezos.

This isn’t 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 his involvement this year has sparked a wave of criticism, shining a light on Silicon Valley’s increasingly influential role in fashion’s biggest night.

A growing relationship between the Met Gala and tech executives is “a new phenomenon in terms of the broader history of the gala, which was really about fashion,” Deirdre Clemente, a fashion historian at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, told Observer.

Founded in 1948 by publicist Eleanor Lambert, the Met Gala began as a fundraiser for the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute, attended primarily by New York City socialites. It was a far cry from today’s global spectacle. The shift toward celebrity accelerated in the 1970s under former 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 U.S. but remains its global editorial director.)

As the Met Gala’s profile has risen, so has its price of entry. Tickets—available only to guests approved by Wintour—cost $100,000, while tables start at $350,000. As tech companies have amassed enormous wealth, they’ve increasingly stepped in to foot the bill in exchange for cultural cachet. This year’s table buyers reportedly include Amazon, OpenAI, Meta and Snap.

“I’m calling it the ‘Tech Gala,’ because so much tech has gotten involved over the last decade,” Amy Odell, the author of the 2022 Wintour biography Anna, told Observer. “Over the years, the price of admission has become so high that it’s just like, who else can afford it?”

Bezos, the founder of Amazon, and Sánchez Bezos are also serving as the lead sponsors for this year’s event. But it was the announcement of their roles as honorary chairs in February that ignited backlash. Despite Wintour defending Sánchez Bezos as a “wonderful asset to the museum and the event” in a recent CNN interview, criticism has continued to mount. An anti-billionaire activist group known as “Everyone Hates Elon,” has even plastered New York City with posters calling for a boycott.

For some observers, however, the presence of ultra-wealthy figures represents less a departure than a return to the gala’s fundraising roots. “If you’re talking about raising money, you invite the people who have the most money,” Adrienne Jones, a fashion professor at the Pratt Institute, told Observer. “Who else to invite to be an honorary chair but one of the wealthiest men on the planet?”

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 backed the gala in 2022, the same year OpenAI created an A.I. installation for the Costume Institute’s accompanying exhibition. Attendees have included not only Bezos but also Elon Musk, Tim Cook and Sergey Brin.

In 2022, Wintour even invited Sam Bankman-Fried, the FTX founder later convicted of fraud, to attend and potentially sponsor the event. He ultimately canceled at the last minute, reportedly frustrating Wintour’s team, according to Michael Lewis’ 2023 book Going Infinite.

Despite occasional controversy, tech companies remain eager to participate. A six-figure fee “is a drop in the bucket to them,” said Odell. “What they get in exchange is so much more valuable, which is to be seen as glamorous and cool and to get that kind of exposure to a largely female audience.”

This year’s backlash, however, signals a shift in public sentiment. Critics are responding not just to tech’s presence but to Bezos and Sánchez Bezos being “front and center this time,” Jones said, pointing as well to growing concerns about wealth inequality and the labor impacts of A.I.

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