Milwaukee — In the middle of a glamorous party Republican National ConventionIn Milwaukee, the atmosphere is even more triumphant, as many major tech companies are throwing their political and financial support at the former president. Donald Trump And Republicans have also weighed in, signaling a possible realignment of support from traditionally liberal Silicon Valley.
It began with reports earlier this week that Elon Musk had pledged to donate $45 million per month to Trump’s campaign for at least the next three months. Election of Ohio Senator J.D. VanceFormer venture capitalist, Cultivating Intimate Relationships Right-wing and libertarian tech leaders from Silicon Valley have floated the idea of Trump as a potential running mate. By Tuesday, Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, co-founders of leading venture capital firms, endorsed Trump on a podcast and said they would donate money to help the former president.
There’s a saying in American politics that “money follows money,” so many are predicting that the influx of donations from Musk and other tech moguls will drive even more money into the Republican Party in the coming weeks — a trend that the vanguard of the party is capitalizing on.
David Sachs, a venture capitalist who once supported Democrat Hillary Clinton and was a relatively early adopter of Trump’s tech money machine, is urging his colleagues to come off the sidelines and Republican candidateIn a social media post this week, he listed a growing number of people who have donated to Trump, including Musk, Andreessen Horowitz, Joe Lonsdale, co-founder of data-mining firm Palantir, and billionaire venture capitalist and big tech investor Doug Leone, all of whom have donated to Trump.
“Come on in, the water is warm,” Sachs wrote.
Sachs, an angel investor who has invested in companies including SpaceX, Uber and Palantir, believes Trump has a much larger base of support in Silicon Valley than meets the eye, but that his supporters are afraid to publicly admit it in a region with overwhelmingly liberal politics. Still, he says his peers are finding the courage to stand up for their beliefs, marking a tipping point.
“I think what we’re seeing is that each incremental endorsement makes the next one more likely to come to fruition,” Sachs told CBS News in an email. “Right now, the dominoes are falling pretty quickly.”
How significant this silicon shift will be and how long it will last is up for debate. Some who track campaign finances closely say it’s too early to tell. And there’s no sign yet that most of the dominant tech platforms, like Meta, Google or Apple, or their leaders, are lining up to join the Trump campaign.
“This isn’t a case of big tech companies that have traditionally leaned to Democrats switching sides,” said Ana Massolier of Open Secrets, a nonpartisan watchdog group that tracks political donations. “Rather, we’re seeing anti-establishment conservatives becoming more politically active,” she added, cautioning that there isn’t enough data yet to tell if this is a major shift or a blip.
Either way, campaign finance experts say the amount of money flowing to Trump is significant and could have a significant impact on this election cycle. If Elon Musk keeps his $45 million monthly pledge, it would make him one of the top five or 10 donors in the past few elections, joining other megadonors such as Democrat George Soros and Miriam Adelson and her late husband, Sheldon, who have given Trump more than $200 million.
Musk and many other tech moguls who have donated money to Trump are backing him for the first time after backing Democrats including Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and Joe Biden in 2020.
“What’s new here is that a group of people who weren’t previously active are now spending hundreds of millions of dollars trying to get Republicans elected, and of course to get Donald Trump elected,” said Saurabh Ghosh, director of federal campaign finance reform at the Campaign Legal Center.
But why is this change happening in the first place? There are many theories.
For the Trump campaign, the change is a result of the candidate’s pro-business policies.
“In the tech sector, we see this surge in support being fundamentally driven by President Trump’s pro-business vision for reducing regulatory burdens and creating an economic environment in which American innovation can thrive,” said Brian Hughes, a senior adviser to the Trump campaign.
In some cases, the link between policies and funding from the tech industry is clear. One example is the cryptocurrency industry’s funding of Trump’s election campaign. After months of discussions between the Trump campaign and prominent cryptocurrency investors, including Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, the former president publicly endorsed cryptocurrency. On his campaign website, he declared it was part of a fightback against “socialist government control.” Shortly thereafter, the Winklevoss brothers each donated $1 million worth of Bitcoin to Trump, denounced Biden’s “war on cryptocurrency.” The Trump campaign opened a portal to accept cryptocurrency donations, the first of its kind for a major party presidential campaign.
The crypto industry’s support for Trump has puzzled some Democrats. The Washington Post reported that Biden administration officials met last week to try to repair the relationship. Biden senior adviser Anita Dunn “appeared surprised by the apparent hostility from the tech startup community,” according to the report.
Even in Trump circles, there is fierce debate about how much the recent influx of tech money to Trump’s reelection effort means. One of Trump’s most ardent supporters, MAGA enthusiast Roger Stone, expressed skepticism.
“I think it’s a deal for this election,” Stone said at the bar of the Trade Hotel, a luxury Milwaukee hotel where top Trump campaign officials were staying during the convention. He believes the development is a result of Vance being selected as vice president.
It’s true that Vance has been heavily supported by many of the Silicon Valley bigwigs who have backed Trump, including Musk and David Sachs. Musk praised Trump’s choice for X shortly after it was announced. Sachs donated $1 million to Vance’s 2022 Ohio Senate campaign, and Vance helped organize a $12 million Trump fundraiser that Sachs co-hosted in June.
But the tech mogul most important to Vance’s political rise has a more complicated history with Trump: Peter Thiel, the mercurial co-founder of PayPal and Palantir, met Vance when he was a law student at Yale and mentored him, gave him jobs, donated generously to his political campaigns and eventually introduced him to Trump.
Thiel became the first major Silicon Valley figure to open up his purse strings for Trump, donating $1.25 million during the 2016 campaign, which earned him the opportunity to speak at the Republican Convention in Cleveland but drew controversy across Silicon Valley and scorn from many other tech leaders.
But tech giants can be fickle when it comes to money. Eight years after breaking Silicon Valley taboo and wholeheartedly endorsing Trump, Thiel has grown disillusioned with what he believes to be the former president and other politicians who failed to deliver the change they promised. He recently announced that he would no longer donate money to Trump or any other candidate. “If I was held up at gunpoint, I would vote for Trump,” he said at the Aspen Ideas Festival in June.
