Silicon Valley has poured more than $394.1 million into the US presidential election this year, according to a Guardian analysis, most of it coming from a massive donation of about $243 million made to Elon Musk for Donald Trump’s campaign.
Analysis of new election data from the US Federal Election Commission (FEC) shows the growing influence of the technology industry in US elections. Cryptocurrency advocates have been particularly active in this election as they fight to prevent regulation, pouring money into presidential campaigns and key congressional races.
Donors come from the biggest tech companies: Google, WhatsApp, LinkedIn and Netflix. Others were powerful venture capitalists who had made billions from technology investments.
In total, Trump received $273.2 million in donations from some of the biggest names in tech, including:
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$242.6 million from Elon Muskowner of Tesla, SpaceX and X (formerly Twitter), whose net worth is estimated at 350 billion dollars.
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$5.5 million from Marc Andreessenthe billionaire founder of venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, also known as a16z. Andreessen’s co-founder, Ben Horowitz, initially supported Trump, but turned to Harris.
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$5.1 million from Jan Kumthe founder of WhatsApp, who made most of his fortune when Facebook acquired the messaging app in 2014. for 19 billion dollars.
Kamala Harris received a total of $120.9 million, including:
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$51.1 million from the Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskowitzwho left the social media company in 2008 to start workflow software company Asana.
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$17 million from Reid Hoffmanthe co-founder of LinkedIn.
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$11.7 million from Chris Larsenthe billionaire chairman of Ripple, a cryptocurrency company.
The FEC filings offer only a glimpse of the tech millions pouring into Washington as they try to influence government and regulators. Accounting for political donations in the US is complex and opaque, and donors can find ways to give money without it being publicly reported.
There are several ways a person can donate to a political campaign in the United States. The first is direct campaign contributions, which are limited to $3,300 per candidate. The second is a donation to a political action committee (Pac), which contributes directly to a political campaign by helping pay for staff, distribution, events and advertising.
The landmark 2010 Supreme Court case Citizens United v. FEC made it much easier for industries and wealthy individuals to contribute to a political campaign, often in ways that are hard to trace but which are perfectly legal.
The court’s ruling gave way to a third, more opaque way to donate: Super Pacs. Corporations and wealthy individuals can give an unlimited amount of money to Super Pac. The only caveat is that Super Pacs can’t contribute directly to a campaign — but they can spend as much as they want on political advertising for their preferred candidate.
Thus, individual and corporate campaign spending is virtually unlimited. Here’s how Elon Musk donated their $242.6 million to the Trump campaign, and how many others managed to spend millions in support of their candidate of choice.
For many of Trump’s wealthiest supporters, Trump’s rhetoric has been overshadowed by his 2017 tax cuts, which are set to expire at the end of 2025. The cuts significantly reduced taxes on the wealthy and on corporations.
Trump also blessed his closest supporters with unrestricted access to the White House after his victory in November. For Musk, the $242.6 million was probably a small price to pay for the direct relationship he now has with the president: Trump appointed Musk to co-chair the new “Department of Government Effectiveness,” or Doge, an advisory committee to evaluate government spending, with fellow entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy .
That’s a reversal from just two years ago, when Musk said Trump should “hang up his hat and sail off into the sunset.” For his part, Trump attacked Tesla and SpaceX and said he could make Musk “get down on his knees and beg.”
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The Guardian’s analysis covers donations made by selected tech millionaires and billionaire contributions to both presidential campaigns.
Persons included in the list include:
– included in Forbes Real Time Billionaires List
– those who have donated to tech-related political action committees (PACs) under Follow Cryptoa website that specializes in tracking political committees related to technology and cryptocurrency
– those who are reported to have supported any of the candidates
These names were checked against official Federal Election Commission (FEC) donation records.
Donations made to either Joe Biden or Kamala Harris were included in the analysis.
The analysis also takes into account donations made by the same individuals to PACs whose primary focus is to oppose or support presidential candidates such as identified by OpenSecretson The Washington Post and other reports. It includes 40 who supported the Trump campaign and another 79 who supported the Harris/Biden campaigns.
The summary figures are probably underestimates because:
– PACs that donate only a portion of their donations to one or the other presidential candidate were excluded because there was no way to verify how much of the donors’ contributions went to each candidate
– donations to any campaign that fall outside the scope of the FEC, e.g. donations made to charitable causes are not included
– the complexity of the PAC donation system and the variability in how donor names are recorded. Manual checks were performed on those valued at $50,000 or more. Donations below this minimum may not show up in an individual’s grand total, but are included in the underlying figures
Calculations exclude refunds received from donors. Only donations made during the 2024 election cycle are included, including donations made in 2023.
But Musk isn’t the only billionaire to back Trump after publicly criticizing him for years. Andreessen was an outspoken supporter of Hillary Clinton in 2016. and a critic from Trump’s anti-immigration stances. Sequoia venture capitalist Doug Leone called the Jan. 6 uprising “horrific” and held Trump responsible for the attack afterward, but ended up donating $3.5 million to his campaign this year.
The flurry of twists and turns is indicative of an ideological shift taking place in Silicon Valley. Big tech has long shunned Washington, but has become increasingly involved in politics as it has rallied around crypto and AI, two relatively new technologies that have yet to receive much government attention or regulation.
Friendliness to Trump has proven fruitful for industries that want to prevent regulation. Oil and Gas Executives donated millions dollars to the Trump campaign, with the former president promising to “drill, baby, drill.”
Crypto donations and Trump’s changing views may also have already paid off. On Wednesday, Trump nominated Paul Atkins, chief executive of Patomak Global Partners, to head the Securities and Exchange Commission, the top US financial watchdog. Atkins is considered crypto-friendly and would replace Gary Gensler, whose efforts to rein in the $3.5 trillion crypto market have put him at odds with the digital currency community.
Although companies in the fossil fuel industry are typically the biggest spenders in elections, the cryptocurrency lobby is quickly becoming the biggest spender in US elections. According to a report by the progressive think tank Public Citizen, the crypto industry was the largest corporate contributor to the 2024 election.
Much of crypto’s influence has been seen in congressional elections—the crypto lobby spent $40 million on the campaign of current Ohio Democratic Senator Sherrod Brown—but crypto has also had a hand in presidential races.
Although Trump was once a critic of crypto, calling it a “fraud,” he has since embraced the industry as its advocates have entered his circle. Trump himself launched a cryptocurrency.
In May, Trump became the first presidential candidate to accept bitcoin donations. Shortly thereafter, twins Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, the billionaire founders of gemini cryptocurrency exchangegifts combined 2.5 million dollars, much of it in actual bitcoins, for the Trump campaign. Tyler Winklevoss called Gensler “Evil” both twins have lobbied hard for light regulation of the industry.
The twins had some of their bitcoins restored by Trump’s campaign committee after exceeding the maximum donation limit.
Over the summer, Trump praised the Winklevosses as “male role models with big, beautiful brains.”
Harris also indicated that she would be more supportive of the industry than her counterpart in the White House. It seemed to pay off: Chris Larsen, chairman of Ripple, a cryptocurrency company that operates its own digital token, gave at least $11.7 million to Harris’ campaign.
“She knows people who grew up in the innovation economy,” Larsen said in October, on Harris. “I think she understands it on a fundamental level, in a way that I don’t think the Biden people just paid attention to.”
Crypto advocates were “tending to hedge their bets and play both sides,” said Lisa Gilbert, co-president of Public Citizen. “In any individual race where they thought one candidate was the crypto candidate, they weighed heavily and often achieved real results.”
But black money isn’t just a thing on the conservative right. The Guardian’s analysis omitted a key donation from Bill Gates, the world’s second-richest person, who reportedly gave $50 million to Harris’ campaign. That’s because his donation doesn’t show up in FEC records because he donated the money through a nonprofit that doesn’t have to disclose donors.
“There are many ways to give. A big one are non-profits that are secretive and the restrictions are almost non-existent,” Gilbert said. The US “has a complex system, and it exacerbates our problem of too much money in politics by making huge chunks of it secret.”
