According to an analysis by the Guardian, Silicon Valley has poured more than $394.1 million into this year’s U.S. presidential election, with the bulk of that coming from the massive $243 million that Elon Musk gave to Donald Trump’s campaign. It is said that this is due to donations.
An analysis of new election data released by the Federal Election Commission (FEC) shows that the tech industry is increasingly influencing American elections. Cryptocurrency supporters have been especially active in this election, fighting to block regulation and funneling money into presidential and key legislative races.
Donors came from some of the biggest tech companies, including Google, WhatsApp, LinkedIn, and Netflix. There were also powerful venture capitalists who made billions of dollars investing in technology.
President Trump received a total of $273.2 million in donations from major companies in the technology industry, including:
$242.6 million from Elon Musk, owner of Tesla, SpaceX, and X (formerly Twitter), who has an estimated net worth of $350 billion.
$5.5 million from billionaire founder Marc Andreessen of venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, also known as a16z. Andreessen co-founder Ben Horowitz initially supported Trump but switched to Harris.
It received $5.1 million from WhatsApp founder Jan Koum. He made most of his fortune when Facebook acquired the messaging app for $19 billion in 2014.
Kamala Harris received a total of $120.9 million, including:
$51.1 million from Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskowitz. He left his job at a social media company in 2008 to found workflow software company Asana.
$17 million from LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman;
$11.7 million from Chris Larsen, the billionaire chairman of cryptocurrency company Ripple.
The FEC filings are just a glimpse of the millions of technologies flowing into Washington trying to influence governments and regulators. Accounting for political contributions in the United States is complex and opaque, and donors can find ways to donate without being made public.
There are several ways to donate to political campaigns in the United States. The first is direct campaign contributions, which are capped at $3,300 per candidate. The second is contributions to political action committees (PACs), which donate directly to political campaigns and help pay for staffing, outreach, events, and advertising.
The landmark 2010 Supreme Court case Citizens United v. FEC made it much easier for industry and wealthy individuals to donate to political campaigns. The methods were often completely legal, although difficult to track.
The court’s decision ushered in a third, more opaque contribution method: the Super Pac. Businesses and wealthy individuals can give unlimited cash to super packs. The only caveat is that Super Pacs cannot donate directly to campaigns, but they can spend as much money as they like on political ads for their favorite candidates.
Therefore, campaign spending for individuals and companies is virtually unlimited. Find out how Elon Musk donated $242.6 million to the Trump campaign, and how many others were able to spend millions supporting the candidate of their choice.
For many of President Trump’s wealthiest supporters, his rhetoric has been overshadowed by his 2017 tax cuts, which are set to expire at the end of 2025. This tax cut significantly reduced taxes for the wealthy and corporations.
President Trump has also blessed his closest supporters with unfettered access to the White House since his November victory. For Mr. Musk, $242.6 million was probably a small price to pay for direct ties to the president-elect: Mr. ), along with fellow entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, who appointed Musk as co-head of the company.
This is a complete reversal from just two years ago, when Musk told Trump he should “put his hat on and sail off into the sunset.” Trump, meanwhile, criticized Tesla and SpaceX, saying they could make Musk “beg on his knees.”
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The Guardian’s analysis looks at donations by selected technology billionaires, as well as billionaires’ donations to either presidential campaign.
The individuals included in the list are:
– People included in Forbes’ real-time rich list
– People who have donated to technology-related political action committees (Pacs) according to Follow the Crypto, a website dedicated to tracking political action committees related to technology and cryptocurrencies.
– People who are reported to have supported either candidate
These names were checked against the FEC’s official donation data.
Donations to Joe Biden or Kamala Harris are also included in the analysis.
The analysis also takes into account donations made by the same individuals to Pax, which primarily focuses on opposing or supporting presidential candidates identified in OpenSecrets, the Washington Post, and other news coverage. This includes 40 people who supported the Trump campaign and 79 people who supported the Harris-Biden campaign.
Aggregated numbers may be an underestimate for the following reasons:
– Packs that gave only a portion of their donations to one presidential candidate or the other were excluded because there was no way to confirm what percentage of a donor’s donations went to which candidate.
– Contributions to any campaign outside the scope of the FEC. Example: Charitable donations are not included.
– The complexity of Pac’s donation system and variations in how donor names are recorded. A manual check was conducted for items over $50,000. Donations below this minimum may not show up in your personal total, but will be included in your topline numbers
Calculations do not include refunds received by donors. Only donations made during the 2024 election period are included, including donations made in 2023.
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But Musk is not the only billionaire to support Trump after years of publicly criticizing him. Andreessen was a vocal supporter of Hillary Clinton in 2016 and criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant stance. Sequoia venture capitalist Doug Leone called the Jan. 6 riot “horrific” and blamed President Trump for the attacks that followed, but ultimately gave his campaign $3.5 million this year. Continued to donate dollars.
This reversal signals an ideological shift taking place in Silicon Valley. Big tech companies have long avoided Washington, but they are becoming more involved in politics by aligning themselves around cryptocurrencies and AI, two relatively new technologies that have yet to receive much government oversight or regulation. .
A friendly attitude towards President Trump has been shown to be beneficial for industries looking to avoid regulation. Oil and gas company executives donated millions of dollars to the Trump campaign, and the former president promised “drill, baby, drill.”
Crypto’s donations and Trump’s change in views are also likely already bearing fruit. On Wednesday, President Trump nominated Patomac Global Partners CEO Paul Atkins to head the Securities and Exchange Commission, the nation’s top financial watchdog. Atkins will replace Gary Gensler, who is seen as crypto-friendly and at odds with the digital currency community over his efforts to crack down on the $3.5 trillion cryptocurrency market.
Fossil fuel industry companies are typically the biggest spenders in elections, but the crypto lobby is fast becoming the biggest spender in US elections. The crypto industry has become the largest corporate donor in the 2024 election, according to a report by the progressive think tank Public Citizen.
Much of the impact of cryptocurrencies can be seen in Congressional elections, where the crypto lobby spent $40 million on the campaign of incumbent Democratic Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown. However, virtual currencies also had an impact on the presidential election.
Trump once criticized cryptocurrencies as a “scam,” but has since embraced the industry as crypto supporters have joined his circle. Trump himself launched a virtual currency.
In May, Trump became the first presidential candidate to accept Bitcoin donations. Shortly after, billionaire twins Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, founders of cryptocurrency exchange Gemini, donated a combined $2.5 million, much of it in actual Bitcoin, to the Trump campaign. Tyler Winklevoss called Gensler a “bad guy,” and both twins have lobbied heavily for less regulation of the industry.
The twins were refunded some of their Bitcoin by the Trump campaign because they exceeded the donation limit.
Over the summer, President Trump praised the Winklevosses as “male models with big, beautiful minds.”
Harris also said she would be more supportive of the industry than her counterpart in the White House. It seems to have worked. Chris Larsen, chairman of Ripple, a cryptocurrency company that manages its own digital token, has donated at least $11.7 million to Harris’ campaign.
“She knows people who grew up in the innovation economy,” Larsen said of Harris in October. “I think she understands it on a fundamental level. I think the Biden people just weren’t paying attention.”
Lisa Gilbert, co-chair of Public Citizen, said crypto advocates were “willing to hedge their bets and play both sides.” “In individual races where one candidate was considered a crypto candidate, they weighed heavily and often had real results.”
However, black finance is not limited to the conservative right. The Guardian’s analysis omitted a major contribution from Bill Gates, the world’s second-richest man, who is said to have donated $50 million to Harris’ campaign. That’s because his donations don’t show up in FEC data because he donated through a nonprofit organization that doesn’t have to reveal its donors.
“There are many different ways to donate, and the big one is to nonprofits, and nonprofits are confidential and there are very few restrictions,” Gilbert said. The United States “has a complex system, and by keeping huge parts of it secret, we are exacerbating the problem of too much money in politics.”
