It was as if the wolves had entered the sheepfold. On the sidewalks of San Francisco's Pacific Heights neighborhood, a few chalk-written slogans remained, a legacy of Donald Trump's visit: "America first." The Republican candidate made a whirlwind stop on June 6 to raise funds from Silicon Valley billionaires, just a week after his conviction by the criminal justice system in New York. In a city that is more than 80% Democratic, his supporters left graffiti and a troubling suspicion: Has Silicon Valley been won over?
The former president was invited by two San Francisco investors, David Sacks and Chamath Palihapitiya. Though not as prestigious as Mark Zuckerberg or Elon Musk, they are well-known in their circles. Sacks, a libertarian Republican, was one of the founders of online payment giant PayPal. Palihapitiya, of Sri Lankan origin, was one of the first executives at Facebook and a supporter of Barack Obama. The evening event, held in a mansion on Broadway Avenue, also known as Billionaires Row, raised $12 million. Among the guests were a number of investors and executives from the cryptocurrency sector.
Trump hadn't been to San Francisco in over a decade. Back in 2016, in the days of the still triumphant high-tech sector, his mantra – "Make America Great Again" – didn't resonate much with a milieu that had little interest in the past. Eight years later, the Republican candidate's slogan resonates more. Silicon Valley is in a growth crisis. Despite – or because of – the explosion in artificial intelligence (AI), salaries are falling and layoffs are persisting. While no significant regulations have been enacted to oversee AI or limit market concentration, many bosses have accused Joe Biden and his Democratic friends of undermining their creativity.
Minority
"There is more conservatism [in Silicon Valley] for sure," Kara Swisher, the chronicler of tech's early days, told us in March. But "they're more libertarian than anything else," she said. They remain a minority in the face of pro-Democrat figures such as venture capitalist Vinod Khosla, LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman and former Facebook number two Sheryl Sandberg.
Be that as it may, pro-Trump entrepreneurs are no longer hesitating to show their support for the man whose vitriolic rhetoric against migrants and attacks on tech executives they denounced just a few years ago. One absentee is investor Peter Thiel. The main black sheep of 2016, the only one at the time to join the Trump team, has decided to stay away from the 2024 campaign. He said he was disappointed by politics.
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