With Vice President Kamala Harris firmly established as the Democratic front-runner, Silicon Valley is banking on the Bay Area native’s tech- and business-friendly credentials.
“Kamala is right from this region,” Box CEO Aaron Levy told Politico. “Her supporters are from the tech industry.”
Harris, an Oakland native, has had close ties to the tech industry throughout her political career, previously serving as San Francisco’s district attorney and then California’s attorney general, and in both roles brought her deep knowledge of Silicon Valley.
In the past, Harris has had a close relationship with Meta’s former COO Sheryl Sandberg. In 2015, when Harris was running for the Senate, the two appeared together at an event at Meta’s Menlo Park headquarters. When she met with Alphabet employees in 2010, Harris called them “family” because of the company’s local base. During her campaigns for California Attorney General and U.S. Senate, Harris relied on campaign contributions from major tech companies. According to OpenSecrets, Apple, Alphabet, Amazon, and Microsoft all contributed to Harris’ 2020 presidential campaign. Apple and Alphabet also contributed to her 2016 Senate campaign.
Silicon Valley’s support continues even in the early stages of her presidential bid. Days after Joe Biden endorsed Harris, she received nods of support from major Democratic donors including Sandberg, Melinda Gates and LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, who previously backed Biden’s campaign. On Tuesday, Netflix co-founder Reed Hastings donated $7 million to Harris’ campaign.
But Harris hasn’t shied away from regulating Big Tech in state and national politics. As a senator in 2019, she supported a California effort to give gig workers for companies like Lyft and Uber additional rights, including overtime pay and the right to unionize. That same year, Harris said the government should “seriously consider breaking up meth.”
That record has likely made other big tech donors wary of backing her unconditionally, and Levy told Politico that more donors would get behind her campaign if she demonstrated an industry-friendly stance.
“If by the end of the week she puts out a tech policy framework — a 10-point plan that’s pro-business, pro-technology, pro-entrepreneurship — and it’s credible, I think she could rally a significant portion of the ecosystem very quickly,” Levy said.
For Levy, Harris’ “pro-tech” policies include immigration policies that make it easier to hire skilled talent from overseas and an end to the government’s current proposal to tax unrealized capital gains. “Without unrealized capital gains, there would literally be no money to invest in stocks or startups,” Levy told Fortune’s Diane Brady.
Under the Biden administration, the Justice Department and Federal Trade Commission have also taken a tougher stance on antitrust law, ensnaring Big Tech companies and in some cases relying on new definitions of what constitutes a monopoly to sue companies like Amazon and Apple.
A spokesperson for the Harris campaign declined to comment publicly on Levy’s remarks, and Box did not respond to a request for comment.
As part of her White House duties, Harris led the Biden Administration’s early policy work on artificial intelligence, an issue currently hot in the tech industry. In May 2023, Harris met with CEOs of top AI companies, including Sam Altman, Satya Nadella, and Sundar Pichai.
A few months later, Harris made clear that she wouldn’t let the world’s leading AI developers escape regulation just because their technology is cutting edge. “President Biden and I reject the false choice that we must make between protecting our citizens and promoting innovation,” she said in a speech in London. “We can and must do both.”
Silicon Valley had high hopes for her role in the White House even when she was selected as Biden’s running mate in August 2020. “She grew up around a lot of innovation and understood how important it is to California’s economy,” former Oracle president Charles Phillips told The Wall Street Journal in 2020, days after she was selected as Biden’s running mate.
Now, with Harris vying for the top spot, Silicon Valley is hoping a rematch with the Democratic candidate will mean policies more favorable to tech. “A lot of people hope Democrats will stop shooting themselves in the foot,” Levy told Fortune’s Brady.
