In Silicon Valley, Where Trump Made Inroads, Democrats Are Now Invigorated

SAN FRANCISCO — In recent weeks, many Democrats in Silicon Valley had kept uncharacteristically quiet as prominent technology leaders — including Elon Musk and investors Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz — endorsed Donald Trump for president.

Even though Democrats had long been a dominant force in Silicon Valley, some were unenthusiastic about supporting President Joe Biden, who was unpopular in the tech industry. They wanted to see if Biden could change the narrative around his struggling campaign. And those who were vocal in their support — such as tech investor Reid Hoffman — faced attacks.

But that reluctance to speak up changed when Biden announced Sunday that he would drop out of the presidential race, paving the way for a new Democratic ticket. Across the tech industry, the floodgates immediately reopened.

“People are fired up,” said Nihal Mehta, an investor at Eniac Ventures, a New York venture capital firm, pointing to an outpouring of excitement online and in group chats around the industry.

Tech executives and investors said they were invigorated by the change. “It’s democracy time, people,” Roy Bahat, an investor at Bloomberg Beta, posted on LinkedIn. Aaron Levie, CEO of Box, a cloud storage company, wrote on X that Biden had shown “amazing leadership,” adding, “Now let’s go!”

The energy was a far cry from the dismay felt in tech circles recently as some of the industry’s most influential voices declared they were for Trump. The rejuvenation could blunt the momentum of pro-Trump conservatives in Silicon Valley and entice more wealthy tech executives to throw their support — and money — behind the Democratic ticket.

Just last week, the political winds in Silicon Valley appeared to be blowing right. On Tuesday, Andreessen and Horowitz, founders of influential investment firm Andreessen Horowitz, argued in a 90-minute podcast that Trump was the best candidate for startups, with plans to donate millions to his campaign. Days earlier, Musk had also endorsed Trump.

They had been preceded by David Sacks and Chamath Palihapitiya, two tech investors who had hosted a $12 million fundraiser for Trump in June. Doug Leone and Shaun Maguire of Sequoia Capital, a top investment firm, had also said that they would vote for Trump.

Their endorsements were the culmination of several factors. Biden has not fostered the same cozy connections with the tech industry that his Democratic predecessors enjoyed. Some of his appointees, including Lina Khan of the Federal Trade Commission, had frustrated tech leaders with persistent lawsuits against the industry. And some tech leaders worried that Biden’s plans to regulate artificial intelligence and change the tax structure might hurt their businesses.

What support there was for Biden in Silicon Valley mostly came in the form of opposing Trump, rather than outright praise for the president.

At a fundraiser that Vinod Khosla, a venture capitalist, held for Biden in May, the discussion was not about Biden’s tech-related policies but instead was about Trump’s values, Khosla said in an interview last month.

Hoffman, a founder of LinkedIn and a prominent Democratic donor, emphasized in essays, videos and social media posts that Trump was a danger to the rule of law and democracy. “You can’t use business justification as your cloak, as your rationalization, for being supportive of Trump,” he said.

Mark Suster, an investor at Upfront Ventures who considers himself a “lifelong moderate Democrat,” said it was impossible to publicly support Biden after he faltered in a debate with Trump last month.

“If you ask yourself why they aren’t speaking up in the last 30 days, it’s because there is nothing defensible to speak up for,” Suster said. “We all know our candidate is not up for another four years.”

Trump’s selection last Monday of JD Vance, a former venture capitalist, as his running mate, combined with the energy at the Republican convention, only made things worse, said Mehta of Eniac Ventures.

“Everyone who was in the Biden camp was really depressed and defeated,” he said. “These events were pretty debilitating for Democrats.”

Yet despite the growing sense of a Make America Great Again takeover, not everyone in tech moved toward Trump.

“You have people with the loudest voices claiming to speak for the broader community, and the views don’t match,” said Katie Jacobs Stanton, founder of Moxxie Ventures, a venture capital firm. “By no means do they line up with the thousands of founders and employees and investors who live and work in Silicon Valley.”

John Coogan, a startup founder, wrote in a blog post in June that media coverage of Silicon Valley’s support for Trump was “at odds with reality.” Top venture capitalists had given four times more money to Democrats than Republicans in the first part of the year, he argued.

“Trump is very unpopular in Silicon Valley in general,” Khosla said, adding that those who were pro-Trump were “only a small constituency.”

Now liberals in tech are rejuvenated. Mehta said that some of his WhatsApp chats, particularly those that included Indian people in tech, exploded with excitement for Kamala Harris, whose mother is from India. To show support for the vice president, some implored people to make small donations, while others discussed potential fundraisers, he said.

Levie of Box said he had spoken to a dozen other tech and business people Sunday who were now optimistic about the election in November. He said he was hopeful that Democrats could deliver a positive message on issues that the tech industry cared about, including AI, entrepreneurship and immigration reform for high-skilled workers.

“We have a chance to get excited and rally around someone,” he said.

On Sunday, Hoffman endorsed Harris, while Khosla called for an open process at the Democratic convention.

Suster said his phone blew up with a collective message of “thank God.” He estimated that three-quarters of the people he interacted with in tech were happy about Biden’s withdrawal and would not support Trump.

Still, the pro-Trump camp is more vocal than before, Suster said, and even if he disagrees, he has become more open to their views.

“We all assumed for a decade or two that the entire industry was Democrats, and that’s clearly not true,” he said.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times .