Dana White, CEO of Ultimate Fighting Championship, joins Meta’s board

Mark Zuckerberg said in a Facebook post Monday that Meta had added Dana White, the CEO of Ultimate Fighting Championship, and two other executives to its board.

Meta is adding White, a longtime friend of President-elect Donald Trump, to the social media company’s leadership amid a series of moves to strengthen its ties to the incoming administration. Last week, the company shook up the top of its policy team, appointing a longtime executive known for his Republican ties as head of global policy. Meta has also donated $1 million to Trump’s inaugural fund.

In recent years, White and Zuckerberg, Meta’s CEO, have bonded over their passion for professional fighting, including mixed martial arts, which Zuckerberg took up in 2022.

“Dana is the President and CEO of UFC, and he has built it into one of the most valuable, fastest growing, and most popular sports enterprises in the world,” Zuckerberg said in his post. “I’ve admired him as an entrepreneur and his ability to build such a beloved brand.”

In 2023, White attempted to broker a cage match between Zuckerberg and Elon Musk, the billionaire owner of social platform X, Tesla and SpaceX. Musk, who has become a close ally of Trump, eventually backed out of the battle, citing an old injury. He claimed Zuckerberg was at fault for not making himself available to fight later on.

Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, created three new board seats for the appointments, bringing the total number to 13. Zuckerberg said the company had also added John Elkann, CEO of Exor, a European-based holding company that controls Jeep and Ferrari, and Charlie Songhurst, a tech investor who previously worked at Microsoft and has recently advised Meta on artificial intelligence projects.

“We have massive opportunities ahead in AI, wearables and the future of social media, and our board will help us achieve our vision,” Zuckerberg wrote.

Meta in recent years has begun to manufacture wearable technology, such as gaming headsets and sunglasses equipped with cameras. It is also competing in a global AI race, launching its own generative system with “open source” code so that it can be freely copied, modified and reused by anyone.

Meta has faced harsh Republican criticism of its content moderation on its social media platforms, which Trump and others argue amounts to censorship of conservative voices. Some of the people the president-elect has tapped to regulate the tech and other industries have promised to crack down as a result.

In recent weeks, Zuckerberg met with Trump at Mar-a-Lago, the president-elect’s resort in Florida, during which the tech executive congratulated Trump on winning the election.