By Daniel Eran Dilger
Published: 12:35 AM EST (09:35 PM PST)
Despite being on medical leave, Apple's chief executive Steve Jobs attended the meeting with President Obama he was invited to as Silicon Valley leader.
While he remained out of sight of the pool of reporters covering the event, a White House official confirmed that all those
invited were in attendance, according to a
report by
Reuters.
In addition to Apple's Jobs, Obama's conference with Silicon Valley executives, held at the home of John Doerr of venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers earlier this evening, was also said to have invited:
Carol Bartz, president and CEO of Yahoo!
John Chambers, CEO and chairman of Cisco Systems,
Dick Costolo, CEO of Twitter,
Larry Ellison, CEO of Oracle,
Reed Hastings, CEO of Netflix,
John Hennessy, president of Stanford University,
Art Levinson, chairman and former CEO of Genentech,
Eric Schmidt, chairman of Google,
Steve Westly, Managing Partner and Founder of The Westly Group and
Mark Zuckerberg, president and CEO of Facebook.
Reuters reported that the meeting, part of Obama's two-day West Coast visit, "was aimed at promoting technological innovation to help boost the struggling U.S. economy and reduce stubbornly high unemployment -- considered crucial to his 2012 re-election chances."
One issue likely to be raised at the meeting is a proposal to allow US corporations to repatriate foreign cash reserves via a temporary
tax holiday, a plan that is being sold as a way to boost the country's economic recovery and create jobs through domestic investment.
Yesterday it was reported that Jobs had been seen at the Stanford Cancer Center, ostensibly to receive additional treatment. A tabloid is said to be publishing paparazzi photos and arranged to have a doctor make a diagnosis of Jobs' condition based on the photos they had obtained.
Apple has not provided updates on Jobs' condition, although he has been reported to be actively involved in the company's ongoing planning and management decisions and is said to frequently visit the company's Cupertino headquarters, even as the company's chief operations officer Tim Cook handles the remainder of its duties while Jobs remains on medical leave.
