SAN FRANCISCO — A growing number of Silicon Valley leaders have come out in public support of Donald Trump since Saturday’s assassination attempt, including some who had previously denounced the former president or supported his rivals, cementing a political shift years in the making in the tech world.
In recent months, many tech elites have quietly stuck by Trump, who has promised industry-friendly policies on cryptocurrency and artificial intelligence, and distanced themselves from Biden due to his scrutiny of industries they see as stifling innovation.
But since the Butler, Pennsylvania, shooting, tech leaders have openly welcomed President Trump.
It took less than 30 minutes for Tesla CEO Elon Musk to tweet his support. On Monday, the Trump-aligned super PAC reported raising $8.5 million from prominent technology leaders, including investor David Sachs, who previously supported the Republican presidential candidacy of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, venture capitalist Doug Leone, who denounced Trump after the January 6, 2021, riots, and Musk himself, who previously voted for Biden and said as recently as March that he would not donate to either candidate in 2024.
And on Tuesday, Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, founders of Silicon Valley’s best-known venture capital firms, endorsed Trump in an hour-and-a-half podcast, arguing that a thriving tech sector is essential to maintaining America’s global dominance. They also criticized the Biden administration for hindering cryptocurrencies, whose firms have raised $7.6 billion to invest in crypto companies.
Meanwhile, Trump’s decision to choose Sen. J.D. Vance, a former venture capitalist, as his running mate delighted billionaire Peter Thiel and other Silicon Valley investors, who see Vance as an ally in their own right and a potential White House candidate.
Before running for the Ohio Senate seat, Mr. Vance worked for Mr. Thiel, a longtime Trump supporter and co-founder of data-mining company Palantir. Mr. Thiel has no plans to donate money in the election, but Mr. Vance’s nomination has confirmed that he will vote for Mr. Trump, said a person with knowledge of Mr. Thiel’s thinking, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss his plans.
Despite its liberal leanings, the tech industry has traditionally supported Democrats, and the level of Silicon Valley’s disillusionment with Biden has surprised some Democrats.
At an invitation-only meeting last week aimed at easing tensions with the cryptocurrency industry, Biden senior adviser Anita Dunn seemed taken aback by the apparent hostility from the tech startup community, according to three people familiar with the matter who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss details of the private event.
Dunn spent more than an hour answering questions from the group, which included cryptocurrency investor Mark Cuban, according to Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), who hosted the call at the Willard Hotel, a block from the White House. Khanna said the organizers were trying to set up a follow-up call to “continue the conversation and further build relationships.”
“Anita appreciated the honest and candid conversation,” a White House official said, adding, “We look forward to continuing to engage with the cryptocurrency and blockchain communities.”
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Sachs touted his growing support for Trump in a post on X on Tuesday, naming a string of Trump supporters, including Andreessen, Leone, Musk and hedge fund billionaire Bill Ackman, who has endorsed Trump since the shooting. Ackman has primarily supported Democrats in the past.
“Come on in, the water is warm,” he wrote, along with a photo of Trump giving a thumbs up.
The endorsements underscore a political realignment among Silicon Valley elites that has shifted the Democratic stronghold to the right since the pandemic, with some leaders saying they are making a calculated bet that Trump will benefit their companies and investments.
“A lot of people who support Trump are approaching it with a venture capital mentality, which is they need to get in early if they know it’s going to lead to victory,” said Matt Krisiloff, CEO of biotech startup Conception, which has raised money for a political action committee backing Biden’s opponent, Dean Phillips.
Many industry leaders have publicly declared that they voted for former President Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012, and for Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton in 2016, and have donated their money and names to the party. Musk himself said he supported the Democrats until Biden’s victory over Trump in 2020. In the podcast, Andreessen talked about meeting former President Bill Clinton when he was 23, and supporting him, Vice President Al Gore, and 2004 Democratic candidate John F. Kerry. Horowitz also donated to Obama’s presidential campaign.
Four years ago, Biden won 73% of the vote in Santa Clara County, which makes up much of Silicon Valley, to Trump’s 25%. In San Francisco, the results were even more overwhelming, with Biden winning 85% of the vote to Trump’s 13%.
When Trump was elected, his misogyny and attempts to ban Muslim travelers meant that open support for him was rare in Silicon Valley, says Bay Area venture capitalist Siri Srinivas. Now, people are less likely to vocally oppose him, despite concerns about the impact a second Trump term could have on policy, he says.
“You run the risk of offending people with more power than you,” Srinivas said.
While many less visible workers have said they will continue to support Democrats, corporate executives and big investors have been actively lobbying against Biden’s more aggressive approach to tech regulation. While Clinton and Obama forged strong ties to the tech industry, Biden appointed progressives who are pro-regulation and would push for tougher policies for the industry, including Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan.
Khanna said Democrats need to do more to highlight how their policies support innovation and encourage people to start businesses in the U.S. “We haven’t made that case enough since the Obama administration,” he said.
Many tech company leaders who were vocal supporters of Democratic candidates in previous elections have been less active in this one, while CEOs of major tech companies, such as Google CEO Sundar Pichai and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, who opposed Trump’s immigration restrictions in 2017, have also stayed quiet publicly.
On Saturday, LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman, one of Silicon Valley’s most prominent Democratic donors, came under fire from critical X users after he suggested that President Trump should condemn political violence after the assassination attempt. Hoffman declined to comment through a spokesman.
“Reade is in a vacuum in her support for Biden,” said one Silicon Valley executive, speaking on condition of anonymity to avoid tarnishing relations.
Trump’s allies and the Republican Party are already actively crafting policies that would benefit the tech industry. Last week, the Republican policy platform included a rollback of Biden’s AI-related executive order that required tech companies to test their technology before releasing it. Trump’s allies are drafting their own executive order calling for a series of “Manhattan Projects” to pump money into military technology and eliminate “unnecessary and burdensome regulations,” The Washington Post reported Tuesday.
The decision to add Vance to the list gives tech leaders who support Trump another tool to influence policy and has already garnered support from the tech industry. Many startup founders are excited by Vance’s youth and say he balances helping startups with oversight of big tech companies like Google.
The Biden administration has also been vocal about the importance of investing in AI, and big tech companies have said they generally support AI regulation, though startups and venture capitalists have expressed concern that Google, Microsoft and OpenAI could use AI regulation to make it harder for smaller companies to compete.
Trump showed his familiarity with tech priorities last month when he appeared as a guest on the “All In” podcast, a popular tech forum co-hosted by Sachs. Referring to a fundraiser Sachs hosted for Trump in San Francisco last month, the former president cited one of Silicon Valley’s current problems: the increasing demand for electricity needed to train expensive, energy-hungry AI models.
“I was at David’s house the other day and I was talking to a lot of geniuses from Silicon Valley and other places and what I realized, more than anything, is that they need a level of power that nobody has ever experienced before,” Trump said.
Although Andreessen and Horowitz disagree with Trump on immigration, the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol and a host of other issues, they made a calculated decision to back the candidate they thought would be best for their business, said the people familiar with the thinking, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.
On Tuesday, the venture capitalists offered perhaps the clearest explanation of Silicon Valley’s ideological shift on the podcast “The Mark and Ben Show.” Tech executives, they say, were once expected to donate money to progressive causes and were praised by society in return. But the political winds shifted in the 2010s, Andreessen said. People began criticizing wealthy tech philanthropists and arguing that they should pay more taxes instead of donating money.
Andreessen said America’s superpower status depends on technological superiority, and anything that slows innovation is dangerous to the country’s ability to protect its way of life.
“America’s technological advantage depends on the survival of startups,” he said.
But Vinod Khosla, a veteran venture capitalist who hosted a fundraiser for Biden earlier this year, said the rationale for Trump’s support is more mundane: People who have backed crypto companies want to shore up their investments.
“There are people in Silicon Valley who are deeply involved in crypto who don’t want crypto regulated and want it to operate freely who are supporting Trump,” Khosla said. “This is crypto versus non-crypto, and most of those people are not in Silicon Valley.”
The shift to the right comes amid austerity efforts in Silicon Valley. Tech companies have laid off tens of thousands of employees over the past two years, and executives have demanded the elimination of numerous benefits and growing stock bonuses. Some tech leaders, including Musk, have criticized diversity efforts and progressive policies passed by the California Legislature. The tech industry has also become much more willing to work with the Department of Defense, despite high-profile employee protests against military contracts in the late 2010s.
Krisiloff, the tech founder who endorsed Phillips, said tech employees in general don’t support Trump. Executives say the Trump Wave is a small but growing phenomenon driven mainly by right-wing elites, some of whom have been afraid to speak out publicly until now.
Still, tech leaders who support Trump are powerful and are pulling others into their cause, Srinivas said. “Either way, they’re very influential,” she added.
Cat Zakrzewski and Aaron Schaffer contributed to this report.
