A Wave of Tech Billionaires Is Turning to Trump — But Not Because They’re MAGA Brothers

A Wave of Tech Billionaires Is Turning to Trump — But Not Because They’re MAGA Brothers

Elon Musk clearly supported Trump on the weekend and according to Wall Street Journalsigned a pledge to make a nine-figure donation to a new pro-Trump political action committee called America PAC. David Sacks, the billionaire tech investor, co-hosted the fundraiser last month at his San Francisco home and spoke at the Republican National Convention on Monday. Other donors to America PAC include the Winklevoss twins, Sequoia Capital’s Doug Leone and Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale, according to the Federal Election Commission filings.

In the last election cycle, the few Trump supporters who were active in the Valley largely maintained their support. under the radar. They are still few in number, but they are no longer hiding and their wallets are open.

So what got into these guys?

It’s likely not a sudden fervor for far-right Christian extremism or a penchant for red baseball caps. Instead, they’re looking at the bottom line.

As Adam Kovacevich, CEO of the Chamber of Progress, a center-left technology policy group, told me, the two biggest pain points for those in the tech industry are the Biden administration’s record on antitrust enforcement and its approach to cryptocurrencies.

“I don’t think it has so much to do with Trump per se,” he said. “I think they probably would have stayed with Biden if they felt there was more focus on the innovation economy.”

In other words: it’s not about billionaires Love Trump, They Really Don’t Like Lina Khan, President Joe Biden’s Top Ambassador antitrust crusaderor Gary Gensler, the Wall Street cop who created there is no secret about his hostility towards digital resources.

Two of the Valley’s most prominent venture capitalists, Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, have pledged to donate to America PAC, according to several News points of sale.

The couple also made no secret of their disappointment with the Biden administration.

“The American government is now far more hostile towards new startups than before,” they wrote in last blog postwhich cited regulatory agencies using “coercive investigations, prosecutions, intimidation, and threats to curtail new industries.” They also lamented the Biden administration’s proposed unrealized capital gains tax, which they said would “completely kill” startups and the venture capital industry.

One person who knows their plans he told the Financial Times that their turn to Trump came because “there’s so much at stake in cryptocurrency” and the rise of artificial intelligence. “That doesn’t constitute an endorsement of (Trump’s) views on immigration,” the person told the newspaper.

Trump has historically shown little love to his tech bros, whose social media companies he has long accused of anti-conservative bias, especially after several of them suspended his accounts in response to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. But the recent influx of tech money — facilitated in part by his 39-year Vice President of Venture Capital pick — appears to soften some of Trump’s Luddite views.

Back in 2021, he named bitcoin “fraud against the dollar.” But he has recently positioned himself as a crypto-friendly candidate. While his campaign has not outlined specific policy proposals for digital assets, it began accepting cryptocurrency donations this spring, and Trump is scheduled to speak at a national bitcoin conference next week.

Meanwhile, the Biden administration is working on mend ties with industry leaders claiming to have been taken down by the SEC and Gensler widely regarded as the Voldemort of the cryptocurrency community.

To be sure, plenty of Big Tech dollars are still flowing to Biden and Democrats down the stretch from tech donors, including LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman and Google co-founder Eric Schmidt. But Trump’s Silicon Valley gains come just as some major Democratic donors have halted talks to replace the president on a ballot.

And as Kovacevich notes, even if a few big names support Trump, “they don’t speak for everyone.”

“In reality, most CEOs of large companies are not particularly involved in party politics,” Kovacevich says. “They will have to work with whoever wins the election.”

Despite the Biden administration’s antitrust enforcement woes and unfavorable stance on cryptocurrencies, some tech billionaires have decided to donate to the pro-Trump political action committee America PAC. The shift is largely due to concerns about the administration’s influence on the tech industry and digital assets, as expressed by venture capitalists like Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz.

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