For several days now, the American press has been reporting that some of the leading figures in Silicon Valley, whose population votes overwhelmingly Democrat, have invested heavily in Donald Trump's bid for the White House. Elon Musk will finance Trump's campaign to the tune of $45 million a month, or around $180 million between now and the November presidential election, revealed the Wall Street Journal on Monday, July 15.
The Winklevoss brothers, known for their legal battle with Mark Zuckerberg over the invention of Facebook, have for their part paid $250,000 each to support the Republican candidate, noted the Financial Times. Silicon Valley venture capitalists – including executives from tech investment funds Sequoia Capital, Valor Equity, Khosla Ventures and 8VC – are also lining up to give large sums to the Republican campaign's treasury. They will be joined by the powerful founders of the Andreessen-Horowitz fund, Marc Andreessen (who tweeted an American flag on the day of the attack on Mr. Trump) and Ben Horowitz: they have announced internally that they want to make donations to the candidate, The Information reported on Tuesday.
Two people appear to have orchestrated this funding offensive. First up is Musk, who used to present himself as a centrist and claimed to have voted for Democratic candidates in the past, but has been engaged in a very right-wing shift over the past three years. During last year's mid-term elections, the CEO of X, Tesla and SpaceX took a stand in support of the Republicans. Although, as recently as March, he claimed not to be giving money to any presidential candidate.
The other driving force behind this Trump support group is Peter Thiel, one of Silicon Valley's few outspoken conservatives for years. The former co-founder – along with Musk, among others – of Paypal has been funding Republican candidates' campaigns for years and was among Trump's unofficial advisers on digital issues as early as 2016.
Musk and Thiel have co-founded "America PAC," a new Super PAC (a "political action committee," which, among other things, collects donations) created to support Trump. The two men drew heavily on their network to do so. According to the New York Times, one of the fund's directors is Joe Lonsdale, co-founder with Thiel of data processing and intelligence start-up Palantir, who personally contributed $1 million to the Super PAC.
More broadly, players from the American tech community have in recent days posted on X their support for Trump following the failed attack on the candidate, like Eli David, an artificial intelligence consultant. David Sacks, an influential investor also close to Thiel and adviser to Musk on his X buyout, took to the stage at the Republican Party convention on Monday to throw his support behind Trump. "In my beautiful city of San Francisco, Democrat rule has turned the streets into a cesspool of crime, homeless encampments and public drug use," he insisted, also castigating the arrival of "thousands of illegal immigrants."
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