Silicon Valley billionaires and crypto fans are throwing their support—and money—at former President Donald Trump.
“The Democratic Party has moved so far left that the Republican Party is now closest to the center,” Tesla CEO Elon Musk posted on X on Wednesday.
The tech bromance comes on the heels of Trump’s near-death experience and choice of J.D. Vance to be his vice presidential running mate. Musk recently promised to shovel $45 million a month into America PAC, a group that is backing the former president, the Wall Street Journal reported. Musk endorsed Trump minutes after the president survived an assassination attempt on Saturday.
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In the lead-up to the endorsement, Musk and Trump had been shaping a potential administration gig for the billionaire, which would involve influencing economic policy, border security and voting integrity, according to the Journal. The two men purportedly talk on the phone multiple times a month.
America PAC’s other donors include the Winklevoss twins, billionaire Douglas Leone of Sequoia Capital, and Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale, who is taking part in leading the group, The New York Times reported.
Venture capital billionaires Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz also plan to donate to Trump, Axios reported Wednesday. On their Tuesday podcast, the pair lamented how President Joe Biden’s policies around AI and cryptocurrency have hurt start-ups in those fields.
The Biden administration has sought to rein in crypto, suing Coinbase and Binance and vetoing a bill that would have scaled back regulations. Trump, meanwhile, has said he doesn't want to lose crypto business to other countries. He plans to release a fourth collection of non-fungible tokens soon.
Trump's new running mate, Ohio Senator J.D. Vance, has been vocally critical of big tech, but he's pro crypto. He has drafted a bill to protect the industry and owns bitcoin himself. While a staunch critic of Biden, he has praised the president's Federal Trade Commission Chair, Lina Khan, who, like Vance, has been crusader against big tech.
The surge in support among the wealthy men of Silicon Valley may have helped sway Trump on Vance’s behalf—and Vance's selection may have helped win them over.
Musk and heavyweight venture capitalist David Sacks were among those who lobbied for Vance's VP selection, according to Axios. Sacks, a former PayPal executive who gave almost $1 million to a PAC supporting Vance’s 2022 Senate bid, boarded the Trump train in early June.
Peter Thiel, who co-founded PayPal with Musk and donated to Trump's previous bids, is another Silicon Valley titan who has a longstanding personal relationship with Vance. Thiel backed Vance's Senate bid with a record-breaking $15 million.
Thiel also facilitated the Vance-Trump relationship, arranging a meeting at Mar-a-Lago with the two men, as well as the president's son. Thiel told The Atlantic in 2023 that he wouldn't be giving to Trump again.
But some of Trump's earlier adopters are still chipping in. Among those who gave $1 million to America PAC last month is another PayPal co-founder, Ken Howery, the former president’s ambassador to Sweden.
