The Silicon Valley realignment leading tech titans to Trump

SAN FRANCISCO - A wave of Silicon Valley leaders has publicly lined up behind Donald Trump since Saturday’s assassination attempt - including some who had previously denounced the former president or supported his rivals - cementing a political shift in the tech world years in the making.

In recent months, many tech elites quietly latched onto Trump, the perceived front-runner, drawn by Trump’s promises of industry-friendly policies on cryptocurrency and artificial intelligence and driven away from President Biden by scrutiny of the sector they see as kneecapping innovation.

But since the shooting in Butler, Pa., tech leaders have enfolded Trump in a very public embrace.

It took barely half an hour for Tesla chief executive Elon Musk to tweet his endorsement. On Monday, a super PAC aligned with Trump reported it had raised $8.5 million from prominent tech leaders, including investor David Sacks, who previously backed Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ GOP presidential bid; venture capitalist Doug Leone, who denounced Trump after the Jan. 6 insurrection; and Musk himself, who previously voted for Biden and said as recently as March that he wouldn’t donate to either candidate in 2024.

And on Tuesday, Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, founders of one of Silicon Valley’s most notable venture capital firms, endorsed Trump in an hour-and-a-half podcast, arguing that a thriving technology sector is critical to sustaining America’s global dominance. They also criticized the Biden administration for stymieing crypto; their firm has raised $7.6 billion to invest in crypto companies.

Meanwhile, Trump’s decision to pick Ohio senator and former venture capitalist J.D. Vance as his running mate has elated billionaire Peter Thiel and some other Silicon Valley investors, who see Vance as one of their own and a potential ally in the White House.

Vance worked for Thiel - a longtime Trump backer who co-founded data-mining company Palantir - before running for Senate. Though Thiel does not plan to give money this cycle, Vance’s nomination clinched his vote for Trump, according to a person familiar with his thinking, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to share his plans.

Despite its libertarian leanings, the tech world has traditionally supported Democrats. The extent of Silicon Valley’s disillusionment with Biden has taken some Democrats by surprise.

At an invitation-only meeting last week intended to ease tensions with the crypto industry, Biden senior adviser Anita Dunn appeared taken aback by the open hostility from the tech start-up community, according to three people familiar with the interaction who spoke on the condition of anonymity to share details of the private event.

Dunn spent more than an hour taking questions from the group, which included crypto investor Mark Cuban, said Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), who convened the meeting at the Willard hotel a block from the White House. Khanna said organizers were working to set up a follow-up call to “continue the conversation and further build the relationship.”

A White House official said “Anita appreciated the honest and candid conversation” and “looks forward to continuing to engage with the crypto and blockchain communities.”

Sacks flaunted the growing support for Trump in a Tuesday X post that unfurled a string of Trump endorsees, including Andreessen, Leone, Musk and hedge fund billionaire Bill Ackman, who endorsed Trump after the shooting.

“Come on in, the water’s warm,” he wrote, adding a picture of Trump giving a thumbs-up sign.

The endorsements highlight a political realignment among Silicon Valley elites, who have been shifting the Democratic stronghold to the right since the pandemic. Some leaders say they are making a calculated bet that Trump will benefit their companies and investments.

“A lot of the people backing Trump are approaching it with the VC mind-set - that, if you see something that is going to be a victory, you need to get in early,” said Matt Krisiloff, CEO of Conception, a biotech start-up, who raised money for a PAC to back Biden challenger Dean Phillips.

Many industry leaders broadcast their votes for former president Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012, as well as Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton in 2016, putting their cash and names behind the party. Musk himself said he supported Democrats up to and including Biden’s successful run against Trump in 2020. In their podcast, Andreessen spoke of meeting former president Bill Clinton at age 23 and supporting him; his vice president, Al Gore; and the 2004 Democratic nominee, John F. Kerry. Horowitz also donated to Obama’s presidential campaign.

Four years ago, Santa Clara county, which encompasses most of Silicon Valley, voted 73 percent for Biden and 25 percent for Trump. The result in San Francisco was even more overwhelming, with Biden winning 85 percent of the vote against Trump’s 13 percent.

When Trump was elected, his derogatory comments about women and his attempt to ban travel from Muslim-majority countries made it rare for anyone in Silicon Valley to openly support him, said Siri Srinivas, a venture capitalist in the Bay Area. Now, she said, people are less likely to vocally oppose Trump, despite fears about the policy implications of a second Trump term.

“There is a risk of offending people that are more powerful than you,” Srinivas said.

While many less prominent workers say they continue to support Democrats, executives and powerful investors have been actively lobbying against Biden’s more aggressive approach to tech regulation. While Clinton and Obama cultivated strong ties to the tech world, Biden has appointed pro-regulation progressives, such as Federal Trade Commission chair Lina Khan, who have gone harder on the industry.

Khanna said Democrats need to do better at showcasing how the party’s policies support innovation and boost people building companies in the United States. “We have not done a good enough job making that argument since Obama,” Khanna said.

Many tech leaders who vocally supported Democratic candidates in previous elections haven’t been as active this cycle. Meanwhile, Big Tech CEOs who opposed Trump’s attempted immigration restrictions in 2017 - including Google CEO Sundar Pichai and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella - haven’t spoken publicly, either.

On Saturday, LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman, one of Silicon Valley’s most prominent Democratic donors, was swarmed by critical X users after he suggested that Trump should denounce political violence after the assassination attempt. Through a spokesperson, Hoffman declined to comment.

“Reid is sort of alone on an island” in his support for Biden, said one Silicon Valley executive, speaking on the condition of anonymity to avoid burning bridges.

Trump allies and the GOP have already been actively designing policies that would benefit the tech industry. Last week, the party’s policy platform included a repeal of Biden’s AI executive order, which instituted requirements for tech companies to test their tech before releasing it. Trump allies are drafting an executive order of their own calling for a series of “Manhattan Projects” to infuse funding into military tech and strike down “unnecessary and burdensome regulations,” The Washington Post reported Tuesday.

The decision to add Vance to the ticket could give Trump-backing tech leaders another conduit to influence policy and is already drawing more tech-industry support. Many start-up founders are excited by Vance’s youth, and say he strikes a balance between supporting start-ups and scrutinizing big tech companies like Google.

The Biden White House also has been vocal about the importance of investing in AI, and Big Tech companies have said they generally support AI regulations - though start-ups and venture capitalists have expressed concerns that Google, Microsoft and OpenAI might use AI regulations to make it harder for smaller firms to compete.

Trump showed he was conversant in tech priorities when he appeared last month as a guest on the “All-In” podcast, a popular forum for the tech world which Sacks co-hosts. Referring to a fundraiser Sacks hosted for Trump in San Francisco last month, the former president mentioned one of Silicon Valley’s current obsessions - the growing demand for electricity to train expensive and energy consumptive AI models.

“I realized the other day more than anything, when we were at David’s house and talking to a lot of geniuses from Silicon Valley and other places, they need electricity at levels that nobody’s ever experienced before,” Trump said.

Though Andreessen and Horowitz disagree with Trump on immigration, the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol and many other issues, they have made a calculated decision to support the candidate they thought would be best for their business, said a person familiar with their thinking, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the person was not authorized to speak publicly.

On their podcast, “The Marc and Ben Show,” the venture capitalists on Tuesday offered perhaps the clearest explanation for the ideological transformation in Silicon Valley. They said tech executives were once expected to donate their money to progressive causes; in return, they were feted by society. But in the 2010s, the political winds shifted, Andreessen said: People began criticizing rich tech philanthropists and arguing that they should pay higher taxes instead of giving their money away.

Andreessen said America’s superpower status rests on its technological advantage, making anything that slows innovation a danger to the country’s ability to defend its way of life.

“American technological preeminence lives or dies on whether start-ups can survive,” he said.

But Vinod Khosla, a veteran venture capitalist who held a fundraiser for Biden earlier this year, said the support for Trump has more prosaic roots: Those who backed cryptocurrency companies want to bolster their investments.

“People in Silicon Valley who are deeply into crypto and don’t want crypto regulation and want to run unfettered are the people supporting Trump,” Khosla said. “It’s crypto versus non-crypto people and most of them are not in Silicon Valley.”

The rightward lurch also comes amid Silicon Valley belt-tightening. Tech companies have laid off tens of thousands of tech workers over the last two years and executives have called an end to numerous perks and ever-increasing stock bonuses. Some tech leaders, including Musk, have criticized diversity initiatives and progressive policies passed by the California legislature. The tech world also has become much more receptive to working with the Pentagon, despite prominent employee protests against military contracts in the late 2010s.

Regular tech workers mostly don’t support Trump, said Krisiloff, the tech founder who supported Phillips. The Trump wave, several executives said, is a phenomenon among a small but growing group of largely right-leaning elites, some of whom were afraid in the past to speak publicly.

Still, the tech leaders supporting Trump are powerful, and they are sweeping others up in their movement, Srinivas said. She added: “One way or another, they are very influential.”

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Cat Zakrzewski and Aaron Schaffer contributed to this report.