WOODSIDE, Calif., Feb. 17 (UPI) -- President Barack Obama met Thursday evening in California with 12 Silicon Valley chief executives, including Facebook's and Apple's founders, officials said.
The meeting in Woodside with Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook and Steve Jobs, the head of Apple who is a pancreatic cancer survivor, and others was a closed-door session, The Washington Post reported.
Others at the meeting in the home of John Doerr, of the venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, included Twitter Chief Executive Officer Dick Costolo, Oracle founder and Chief Executive Larry Ellison, and Netflix Chief Executive Officer Reed Hastings, the Post reported.
The meeting focused mainly on Obama's innovation initiatives, White House officials said. The president promised to fund tax credits for research and development, reform the patent system and cover the country with high-speed wireless-Internet connections, the Post reported.
Obama cited Facebook in his Jan. 25 State of the Union address as being part of a history of inventive power and innovation that helped make the United States strong and would, he said, continue to drive its growth.
"We're the nation that put cars in driveways and computers in offices -- the nation of Edison and the Wright brothers, of Google and Facebook," Obama said. "In America, innovation doesn't just change our lives. It is how we make our living."
