The affluence of the tech giants and venture capitalists in Silicon Valley continue to play a crucial role in upcoming historical presidential election.
Sometimes, the “behid the scene” moments become the talk of the town or most-liked or most-viewed than the actual cinema. It's fun and exciting. The same applies to the presidential race of this year. What's exactly happening behind the presidential election seems to be much more exciting! Every passing day, the presidential election is taking surprising turns. Just like modern day electronic gadgets are incomplete without sillicon, the contribution (or influence) of sillicon valley in America's presidential race is simply undeniable. Let's find out, how tech giants are hyping the battle royale with their bets.
The world of technology has long been divided by famous rivalries. The most revered ones include Macs versus PCs, open source versus closed source, and so on. However, the biggest battle or partition is political. Any election is incomplete without allies, influence of affluent people.
It's not a secret that a major chunk of business leaders in Silicon Valley are left-leaning. Surprisingly, the public endorsement made it look slightly less liberal for 2024 presidential race.
Support for Democrats: Since Mr. Joe Biden made the announcement of not participating for a second term, there has been a steady growth of public endorsements in favour of Vice President Kamala Harris, who is also the presumptive Democratic nominee.
Some of the most prominent figures supporting Democrats are venture capitalist Vinod Khosla, C.E.O. of Box Aaron Levie, investor Roger McNamee, cofounder of LinkedIn Reid Hoffman, and so on. The co-founder of Netflix Reed Hastings reportedly donated $7 million to the Kamala Harris campaign.
Support for Donald Trump: The biggest names in the list is Tesla owner Elon Musk. Other prominent figures are Craft Ventures cofounder David Sacks, Social Capital founder Chamath Palihapitiya, Andreessen Horowitz cofounder Ben Horowitz, cofounder of Paypal Ken Howery, cofounder of Winklevoss capital management and Gemini Cameron Winklevoss, and so on.
The Neutral: Amidst this tough polarization, one person reminded silent. He is none other than Mark Zuckerberg of Meta.
The tenure of Trump was different from Biden’s administration. Sillicon Valley's Moghuls received lots of support, even in crypto sector. However, President Biden brought some new regulations on different industries. High interest rate led to IPO market remain at a near standstill since 2022. One major source of liquidity comes from acquisition of start-ups by big tech companies, which has also considerably slowed down.
Meanwhile, this publicly backing one contender prompted rifts among former colleagues and friends. “I lost lots of friends and disappointed family as well,” Sequoia Capital’s Shaun Maguire mentioned about the ramifications of his X announcement that he was “donating $300,000 to the Trump campaign.” He noted: “But that’s okay, I was expecting it. It’s sad we live in a time of such extreme polarization.”
One example of colleagues against each other is Reid Hoffman’s support for Kamala Harris. The former was once colleague of Donald Trump.
“There might have been people who quietly supported [Trump], but nonetheless at least what you saw publicly was pro-[Democrat],” said Bradley Tusk, a venture capitalist who had managed Michael Bloomberg’s 2009 mayoral re-election campaign. He also advised Andrew Yang’s 2021 mayoral campaign. “This time around,it’s a lot more mixed,” said Tusk.
Tusk further analyzed: “Under Trump, there was a ton of liquidity. Under Biden, there was not. While that’s not necessarily to the credit of Trump or discredit to Biden, human beings are going to look at their own lived experience and vote accordingly.”
With only a couple of months left for presidential election, looking at the political favouritism, analysts are anticipating an overheated political spectacle which can possibly change the fate of America during and post 2024 election, whoever enters the White House.
