Tech
VCs Andreessen and Horowitz Are the Latest Reported Trump Donors in Big Tech
Top line
Prominent venture capitalists Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz both plan to donate to political action committees supporting former President Donald Trump, several stores reported on Tuesday, becoming the latest tech giants to back Trump’s reelection bid.
Marc Andreessen, left, expressed his support for Donald Trump on Tuesday.
Anadolu via Getty Images
Main aspects
Andreesen and Horowitz, founders of the eponymous venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, have told employees they plan to donate to PACs that support Trump, The Information first reported; the duo released a 90-minute podcast episode detailing their motivations for endorsing Trump on Tuesday afternoon.
The duo’s motivation is largely due to an expected loosening of regulation in areas like cryptocurrencies under Trump, anonymous sources told the Information and Axes.
Andreas, Worth $1.9 billion according to Forbes estimates, and Horowitz joins a growing chorus of historically left-wing Silicon Valley as tech giants side with Trump.
No one is more famous than Elon Musk, the richest man in the world as CEO of SpaceX and Tesla and owner of X, who She said Saturday he “fully approved[s]”Trump and who is the Wall Street Journal reported On Monday he said he plans to spend about $45 million a month on Trump-focused PACs (Musk he answered to the report as “fake wildebeest”).
There are several other tech billionaires who have recently donated to a nascent super PAC backing Trump, including Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale, cryptocurrency kings Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, and venture capitalists Antonio Gracias and Douglas Leone, second to the Financial Times.
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Which billionaires support Trump?
In addition to those listed above, some potentially surprising notable billionaires who have supported Trump include investors The Ackman Account AND Nelson Peltztogether with the CEO of Gamestop by Ryan CohenOther Billionaires Who Donated More Than $1 Million to Trump’s Election Efforts to include the world’s richest self-made woman, Diane Hendricks, banking heir Timothy Mellon, and New York Jets owner Woody Johnson. A notable exception is PayPal and Palantir co-founder Peter ThielA previous Trump donor who She said until last month he would not have given money to Trump’s super PACs, but who former His employee, J.D. Vance, was just chosen as Trump’s running mate.
Key context
Andreessen and Horowitz are ranked No. 36 and 37, respectively, on the Forbes list. Midas List of leading venture capitalists, who built their reputations with early investments in companies like Coinbase, Instagram, and OpenAI. Andreessen is a board member of Facebook’s parent company, Meta. Andreessen Horowitz is closely tied to Musk’s empire, investing in private aerospace giant SpaceX and financially backing Musk’s 2022 acquisition of X, then known as Twitter. Their view of Trump, who called the largest cryptocurrency bitcoin a “scam” in 2021 before vowing to be a “crypto president” this election campaign, as a windfall for cryptocurrencies is an evidently misguided view shared from the market, with bitcoin prices rising more than 10% in the last three days, as election betting odds tilted in Trump’s favor.
Crucial quote
“Stop persecuting our entrepreneurs,” said Jeff Skoll, a major Democratic donor and eBay billionaire who as they say has donated $2 million to a PAC that supports Democratic Senate candidates, he wrote Saturday in X. In his critique of the Biden administration’s alleged mistreatment of Tesla, Skoll offered perhaps the clearest example yet of the reasoning behind Silicon Valley’s power brokers’ apparent shift to the right.