Until the Joe Biden administration stepped into the White House in January 2021, the alliance between Silicon Valley and the Democratic Party was a steadfast element of American politics. In the last year, conversations have moved to Mar-a-Lago, the address of Trumpian power.
It’s not just SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who had previously supported Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden and now played a key role in shaping the new Donald Trump administration, several tech leaders have warmed up to the Republicans.
A new avatar of Silicon Valley is unfolding at a time when Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a recent podcast with Joe Rogan: “Masculine energy I think is good, and obviously society has plenty of that, but I think that corporate culture was really trying to get away from it.” He continued: “I think having a culture that celebrates the aggression a bit more has its own merits that are really positive.”
Here are the people helping Trump connect with Silicon Valley:
Marc Andreessen
Marc Andreessen is a popular Silicon Valley investor who co-founded the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, whose portfolio includes Airbnb and over 100 AI companies. He has publicly acknowledged that half of his time has lately been spent at Mar-a-Lago since Election Day, helping the transition team.
As the co-founder of Netscape, his company’s web browser introduced many Americans to the Internet in the 1990s and in the past, he supported Barack Obama for President and voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016.
Andreessen mirrors the shifting attitudes of many venture capitalists and start-up leaders who didn’t take kindly to the Biden administration’s attempts to crack down on the tech sector. His influence on Trump has been under the radar and stands in sharp contrast to that of Musk.
Elon Musk
Trump has picked Elon Musk and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy to lead a new department of government efficiency, tasked with dismantling bureaucracy, reducing excess regulations and cutting wasteful expenditures.
The full extent of his financial contributions to Trump’s election effort remains unknown but Bloomberg puts it north of $132 million. In the first three days after the election, the value of Tesla jumped 25 per cent Musk’s personal net worth crossed $300 billion.
So far, Musk has tweeted to imply that he might try to fire many government employees and dismantle the department of education.
His reward? During his campaign trail, Trump suggested his government would fund Musk’s plan for a crewed Mars mission (Musk wants it to happen by 2028).
“Elon Musk and others, right now they’re in the halcyon moment with Donald Trump,” said investor Anthony Scaramucci, who was briefly the White House media secretary before being fired by Trump in 2017.
David Sacks
For much of last year, Silicon Valley venture capitalist and entrepreneur David Sacks has been a staunch ally of Trump and he often argued on his podcast (All-In) that Trump’s pro-industry stances would lead to innovation and growth in the tech industry.
He has been rewarded with a (brand new) part-time role in the White House — “AI & crypto czar”. Though nobody is sure how much of a say he would have, leaders in the crypto sector are cheering him on. In September, Trump rolled out his own crypto venture, World Liberty Financial.
Sacks also enjoys a good rapport with Musk and has known him since “PayPal Mafia” (a nickname given to a group of alumni of PayPal, the payments company) days. The portfolio of his venture firm, Craft Ventures, is packed with crypto and artificial intelligence companies, including a stake in Elon Musk’s AI startup, xAI.
He will also chair the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST), an independent committee of experts meant to help the President make important decisions and develop evidence-based recommendations on policy.
Michael Kratsios
In Trump’s first term, Michael Kratsios was the chief technology officer. This time, he will lead the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), which coordinates science policy across the US government. He has also
been a managing director at Scale AI and has been helping lead Trump’s tech policy transition team.
Sriram Krishnan
The Chennai-born techie will be a part of OSTP. Krishnan has extensive Silicon Valley experience, with roles at Andreessen Horowitz, X, Meta and Snap. Trump said he will serve as a senior policy advisor for artificial intelligence.
After Elon Musk acquired Twitter (now called X), he was asked to run the platform temporarily in 2022. Earlier, he played an important role in developing the Facebook Audience Network, which competes with Google’s ad technologies.
Brendan Carr
The veteran regulator will be the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission. He has promised to slash regulation, go after Big Tech and haul up TV networks for political bias. “The censorship cartel must be dismantled,” he said in a November post on X.