Venture-Backed Trumpism

Silicon Valley, strictly speaking, does not exist. Its geographic boundaries are fluid and contested; even the places considered central to it are oddly placeless. Driving through Menlo Park and Mountain View, you could be forgiven for thinking you were nowhere at all. What defines the Valley is something you can’t see: the velocity of the capital coursing through it. The region is home to more than $14 trillion worth of publicly traded companies, four of which are the largest on earth. It also includes some number of people who think Donald Trump should be the next president of the United States.

Trump has never been without admirers in the Northern California tech industry. But they appear to be more numerous in this election cycle. There is, of course, Elon Musk, who announced his endorsement within an hour of a bullet perforating the former president’s ear, posting a video to X of a fist-pumping Trump with blood on his face. “Last time America had a candidate this tough was Theodore Roosevelt,” he bubbled in a follow-up post. Trump, in turn, wants to offer Musk a job in his administration.

About a dozen other high-ranking figures from Silicon Valley have also declared their support. The venture capitalist and Palantir cofounder Joe Lonsdale has given $1 million to a Trump-allied super PAC, as has Sequoia Capital’s Doug Leone. Another Sequoia partner, Shaun Maguire, has contributed $300,000, while Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, cofounders of the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, have publicly promised to make a significant contribution. In June the venture capitalist David Sacks held a $300,000-a-plate fundraiser in his San Francisco home that brought in $12 million. Several other tech notables were in attendance, including the venture capitalist Shervin Pishevar and the crypto barons Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss.

Trump’s selection of the Ohio senator J.D. Vance as his running mate has thrilled his Valley backers. Vance has long-standing ties to tech thanks to his friendship with the venture capitalist Peter Thiel, who helped him break into the industry as a recent Yale Law graduate. Vance lived in the Bay Area from 2015 to 2017, working first as a biotech executive and then at Mithril Capital, a venture firm that Thiel cofounded. Vance cofounded his own venture firm in Cincinnati in 2020, shortly before embarking on a political career in which his Valley connections proved indispensable. Thiel contributed $15 million to Vance’s 2022 Senate run; Sacks gave $1 million. More recently, these men (and they are all men), together with Musk, lobbied Trump to add Vance to the ticket. “WE HAVE A FORMER TECH VC IN THE WHITE HOUSE GREATEST COUNTRY ON EARTH BABY,” Delian Asparouhov, another Thiel-linked venture capitalist, hollered on X after the announcement.

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