Overview
- The gala, held Monday at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, raised a record $42 million for the Costume Institute, which relies on this event to fund exhibitions, acquisitions, and operations.
- Jeff and Lauren Sánchez Bezos served as lead sponsors with a reported $10 million contribution, as individual tickets hit $100,000 and tables were priced at $350,000.
- OpenAI, Meta, Snapchat, Shopify, and Amazon purchased tables, and tech leaders including Evan Spiegel, Adam Mosseri, and Sergey Brin walked the carpet.
- Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos skipped the red carpet and entered quietly, following street protests, “Boycott the Bezos Met Ball” posters, building projections near Bezos’s penthouse, and a Ball Without Billionaires counter-event.
- The evening launched the Costume Institute’s “Costume Art” exhibition and the new Condé M. Nast Galleries, in a year that marked the first time a tech figure led sponsorship at the fashion world’s flagship fundraiser.