- Tech leaders who overtly supported Donald Trump took to X to rejoice his win Wednesday morning.
- “Warned you for months: Landslide,” mentioned Keith Rabois, a enterprise capitalist and distinguished donor.
As former president Donald Trump swept to victory Wednesday morning, supporters in Silicon Valley posted messages of congratulations and even gloated over his return to the Oval Office.
“Warned you for months: Landslide. And finest GOP widespread vote in twenty years,” mentioned Keith Rabois, one in every of tech’s largest Republican donors. “Godspeed to President @actualDonaldTrump,” Chamath Palihapitiya posted on X. Shaun Maguire, a Sequoia investor and fellow Trump donor, heralded Trump’s comeback because the “Renaissance.”
Some of tech’s most high-profile and wealthiest names supplied their first reactions after main information networks known as the race for Trump.
Elon Musk was within the room the place it occurred Tuesday night time. The billionaire proprietor of X and Tesla watched the election outcomes roll in with Trump from Mar-a-Lago.
“The folks of America gave @actualDonaldTrump a crystal clear mandate for change tonight,” mentioned Musk.
In the previous few months, the notion of the tech business as a liberal stronghold diminished as extra tech founders and traders overtly supported Trump. Political advocacy, particularly for Republicans, was once largely taboo in tech, which is centered in among the bluest areas of the nation; greater than 85% of San Francisco voters went for President Joe Biden within the 2020 election.
This election cycle, the minority of Republicans in tech — whether or not motivated by issues about regulating cryptocurrency, limits on M&A, or help for Israel — grew to become extra emboldened to share their views.
Musk grew to become Trump’s noisiest champion in tech. He endorsed Trump in July and had been barnstorming by means of the keystone swing state of Pennsylvania, holding his personal rallies, and chopping $1 million checks to a fortunate few who signed his petition. Trump had additionally obtained endorsements from well-known enterprise capitalists Doug Leone, Joe Lonsdale, and David Sacks.
“Trump was presupposed to be the Left’s unhealthy dream, a quick interlude between twenty years of Obama/Biden/Harris rule,” mentioned Sacks, a accomplice at Craft Ventures who spoke on the Republican National Convention in July. “As it seems, he is the transformational determine, a basic break that they could not cease, it doesn’t matter what they threw at him.”
By the numbers
This election cycle, traders on the high enterprise capital corporations plowed tens of hundreds of thousands of {dollars} into the presidential election and key congressional races. Business Insider not too long ago trawled political donation knowledge launched by the Federal Elections Commission to see how staff at tech funding corporations donated by candidates and causes.
Sequoia Capital’s Doug Leone was one in every of enterprise’s most prolific GOP-aligned political donors, giving his virtually $3.8 million to the National Republican Committee and different causes. Leone had but to weigh in Wednesday morning.
Investors at Founders Fund, which has backed SpaceX and Palantir, have been almost 100% Republican in donations, although the majority of contributions got here from Rabois, who left the agency in January to rejoin Khosla Ventures.
Marc Andreessen, an early Facebook and Coinbase investor through his agency Andreessen Horowitz, had a curious relationship with Trump. He made donations to Trump’s election efforts, telling his podcast listeners that the previous president was one of the best candidate to help a tech-friendly agenda, however he didn’t explicitly endorse Trump.
In the early hours of Tuesday morning, Andreessen tweeted, “It’s time to construct. “
Ben Horowitz, his accomplice within the agency, took a diplomatic flip because the race entered its remaining part. He donated to a pro-Trump tremendous PAC and, in October, hedged his guess by saying he deliberate to make a big donation to elect Harris. Horowitz instructed staffers in a memo that he and his spouse, Felicia, had recognized Harris for over a decade and that “she has been an important good friend to each of us throughout that point.”
As of Tuesday night time, Horowitz had solely reposted a tweet from Coinbase govt Emilie Choi, who wrote, “Crypto wins….” in response to blockchain-friendly candidate Bernie Moreno taking the Ohio Senate race.
