The June fundraiser sounded alarm bells suggesting that a new political movement needed to be held accountable, but little in its organizers’ records suggests a deep allegiance to MAGA doctrine. Palihapitiya has supported Democrats in the past and is currently the CEO of Hustle, a peer-to-peer texting platform for progressives. Sacks has spent most of the 2024 election raising money for nearly every candidate running except Biden or Trump. The Purple Good Government PAC, which is funded primarily by Sackshas donated money to congressional candidates across the political spectrum, and last year Sacks made donations in support of Ron DeSantis, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Dean Phillips, among other candidates. Sacks has also He said Trump should be disqualified from office as a result of his behavior on January 6, years before his recent endorsement.
Other influential Silicon Valley figures and donors with known right-wing affinities, such as Peter Thiel and Elon Musk, have so far stayed resolutely out of the race. (Thiel announced last fall that he would not fund any candidacy in this cycle; Musk has suggested that I might endorse a candidate later. in the cycle and that he was “moving away” from Biden).
Meanwhile, a WIRED analysis of campaign contributions suggests that, if anything, the venture capital industry is leaning more Democratic this cycle than in the past. The top 20 firms that, along with their employees, donated the most money They have given about $2 to Democrats for every $1 they have given to Republicans, a figure higher than the average of the past 10 cycles.
The only segment of the tech industry that has shown pluralistic support for Republicans, if not Trump, has been the cryptocurrency industry. Top cryptocurrency leaders have long criticized the Biden administration for its plans to regulate the industry. While the leading cryptocurrency PAC, Stand With Crypto, has declined to endorse a presidential candidate, its website says Trump and Kennedy are much better for the industry that Biden.
“Bitcoin sits at the intersection of finance and energy. (Trump) sees the value in that. He wants this new industry to grow and thrive here,” says Brian Morgentstern, director of public policy at Riot Platforms, a bitcoin infrastructure company, and a former Treasury Department official in the Trump administration. “And the flip side of that has been the Biden administration’s approach to the industry, which seems to be regulate first and ask questions later.”
While the cryptocurrency industry’s roots lie in Silicon Valley, it is only a small part of the larger tech ecosystem.
“We’re mixing up Silicon Valley people with people who are, you know, like the crypto bro group with people who are CEOs of Fortune 500 companies,” says Lucy Caldwell, founder of Mockingbird Lab. “It’s all getting mixed up, and any one of them wants to tell you that they’re speaking out for this radical shift in favor of MAGA, regardless of whether they do or not.”
“The crypto industry is focused on the economics of this,” Hoffman says. “We’ll figure it out if it’s Biden, but we can buy influence with Trump. So I think there’s a big move in the crypto industry toward a pro-Trump stance.”
Biden’s recent debate performance has served to scare off a group of Silicon Valley megadonors, including Laurene Powell Jobs and Ron Conway. According to The New York TimesOne Silicon Valley donor canceled an upcoming fundraiser for Biden because of the debate. But instead of considering shifting their support to Trump, they have discussed how to intervene in Biden’s nomination.
“I’ve seen some emails from people in Silicon Valley saying, ‘I’m not going to donate anymore until I have more confidence,’” Hoffman told WIRED. “Part of the reason you hear such loud voices like, ‘Biden should release his delegates and open up the convention a little bit,’ is because people are so frantic about the dangers of a Trump win.”
