The image was startling, but a look into what could be tech's immediate future.
After being ostracized by the tech industry for most of the election year, there sat venture capitalist Peter Thiel, beaming, to the left of President-elect Donald Trump at the Trump Tower Tech summit in mid-December.
Around him was a ring of glum-faced and pensive tech titans, including Apple's Tim Cook, Amazon's Jeff Bezos, Alphabet CEO Larry Page and Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg.
Silicon Valley's billionaire leaders had disavowed Trump during the campaign, throwing their weight behind rival Hillary Clinton. Only Thiel stumped for the real-estate mogul, and after the tech industry had turned on him for that and his role in Gawker's failure, he was luxuriating in the I-told-you-so moment.
The display of power portends a roiling year or two in tech. Trump railed against Amazon and Apple in tweets about corporate taxes and cyber security; now, he's likely to shape those issues as well as immigration reform,
