Sen. J.D. Vance of Ohio shakes hands with former President Donald Trump at a rally in Delaware, Ohio, in 2023. Vance has ties to tech billionaires who supported Trump’s running mate.
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Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance’s Appalachian roots are well known thanks to his best-selling autobiography, “Hillbilly Elegy,” but another aspect of Vance’s background is now gaining attention: his ties to some of Silicon Valley’s most prominent billionaires.
Vance’s 2016 book about his difficult childhood came out just as he was quietly cultivating ties to ultra-wealthy tech magnates who were at the polar opposite of the Rust Belt working class.
Now, with President Trump nominating him as vice president, many elite tech leaders are expected to rally behind the Republican candidate and help fund Trump’s reelection bid.
Here are five things to know about why tech’s billionaire class is supporting Vance and what it means for the 2024 presidential election.
Elon Musk and influential venture capitalists are spearheading the Trump/Vance push
Musk endorsed Trump just minutes after a gunman tried to assassinate the former president in Pennsylvania, and then doubled down on his support after Trump announced Vance as his running mate.
While working at a venture capital firm in San Francisco, Vance became a protégé of PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel, a man considered a Silicon Valley kingmaker. When Vance ran for Senate, Thiel backed his candidacy with a $15 million donation.
Mr. Vance also developed a relationship with David Sachs, a former tech executive and podcaster who has been a huge supporter of Mr. Musk since the billionaire bought Twitter, now TwitterX. Mr. Sachs recently hosted a fundraiser for Mr. Trump at his San Francisco home and spoke at the Republican National Convention this week. Mr. Trump raised $12 million at Mr. Sachs’ events.
Using X as a megaphone, Musk and Sachs have been blaring their calls for Trump and Vance on a daily basis. “Come on in. The water is warm,” Sachs wrote to X on Tuesday, following a list of prominent tech figures who currently support Trump.
Tech billionaires have already donated millions of dollars and are expected to give the Trump/Vance campaign a boost.
Shortly after Vance was announced as Trump’s running mate, a new tech-focused super political action committee called America PAC was announced.
According to a recent filing with the Federal Election Commission, the group has raised more than $8 million with backing from cryptocurrency billionaires Winkelvos brothers, data analytics firm Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale and Doug Leone of venture capital firm Sequoia Capital.
The group’s money could be a powerful asset to the Trump campaign.
Andreessen and Horowitz plan to inject capital into the group. And The Wall Street Journal Elon Musk could reportedly pump $45 million per month into the effort.
Trump’s pick of Vance has drawn praise in the cryptocurrency community, where investors are hoping for looser regulation of the digital currency. In his latest federal financial disclosure, Vance reported holding between $100,000 and $250,000 in Bitcoin.
Tech elites see Vance as a champion for reform on taxation, AI and cryptocurrency regulation
Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, who run the prominent venture capital firms that bear their names, released a podcast on Tuesday outlining their support for Trump and Vance.
Horowitz said he was reluctant to get involved in politics but had no other choice because “the future of our company, the future of technology, new technology and the future of America is literally at stake.”
The two said the Biden administration’s proposed regulations on cryptocurrencies and artificial intelligence are too strict and said they worry a second term for the administration would stifle innovation in the United States.
Their firm has invested in numerous cryptocurrency and AI startups, making big bets on those two industries that economist Hammond said “will be entirely dependent on U.S. government policy.”
Andreessen, a former Democrat, said the “final push” that led him to move away from Biden was the president’s policies aimed at the ultra-wealthy, including a 25% tax on unrealized gains for households with assets of more than $100 million.
Such a tax on wealthy Americans “would make it so startups simply impossible,” Andreessen argued on the podcast. “It would be the end of venture capital. Companies like ours wouldn’t exist.”
“If there’s one ideology that’s common to the rising right in Silicon Valley, it’s a sense that the system is broken and that we can build a better system,” Samuel Hammond, an economist at the right-leaning think tank Foundation for American Innovation, told NPR.
Tech billionaire backs Trump and Vance, opposes so-called “wokeness”
While many of the tech moguls who support Trump and Vance are arguing for policies that favor Silicon Valley, the other side of the coin is that tech elites are embracing the Republican candidate as part of a rebellion against liberals.
Whether opposing diversity, equity, and inclusion rules or policies that support transgender youth, Musk, Sachs, and other tech elites have used X to go on the offensive on culture war issues.
Vance is not only saying the DEI agenda is a destructive ideology, but he is also someone with a venture capital background who is trying to fight the culture wars.
“A lot of people who once identified as libertarian are now rethinking themselves or veering toward right-wing populism or Trumpism, and Vance is a perfect example of that,” said Max Chavkin, author of “The Contrarian: Peter Thiel and Silicon Valley’s Pursuit of Power,” which discusses Vance.
“J.D. Vance is viewed as one of their kind,” Chavkin added. “He also takes policy positions that are seen as friendly to technology,” he said. “But I think that’s secondary to the identity issue.”
While not all of Silicon Valley supports MAGA, there is growing support in the venture capital world.
Much of the tech industry remains very liberal: rank-and-file tech workers at large companies and small startups tend to support Democrats, and their donations typically support left-leaning causes.
The Information, a popular Silicon Valley technology news site, conducted a reader survey this week and found that about 60% of respondents plan to vote for President Biden in November.
But tech investors and their elite peers are a different story, says author Chavkin.
“It’s tempting to generalize this and say the entirety of Silicon Valley is supporting the former president, but what’s really happening is that the right wing of Silicon Valley has been galvanized and persuaded to provide funding,” he said.
Executives from major companies including Apple, Nvidia, Meta, Microsoft, Amazon and Google have not endorsed any candidate, following a tradition of Big Tech leaders staying on the sidelines during presidential elections.
