Tech executives, whose fortunes have been on an upward curve from a 11-year Bull market that markedly favored their industries were 2020’s top political donors. Most of them spent their fortunes to help the Democrats take control and to get President Trump out of office because of antipathy towards his policies on immigration, climate change, trade and management of the pandemic.
Some of the largest donors are as follows
- Asana CEO Dustin Moskovitz spent 24 million, Twilio CEO Jeff Lawson and his wife, Erica spent about 7 million and former Google CEO Eric Schmidt donated around 6 million to Future Forward USA, a super PAC, for Joe Biden
- Netflix’s CEO Reed Hastings and his wife, Patty Quillin donated over $5 million to the Senate Majority PAC for Democratic candidates in close races in states including Iowa, Texas and Maine
- Reid Hoffman, a partner at venture firm Greylock Partners donated around $14 million. This included $2 million to the Senate Majority PAC and $1 million each to Unite the Country and American Bridge 21st Century, both of whom are Biden backers.
- Vinod Khosla contributed $1 million each to the Senate Majority PAC and the American Bridge 21st Century
- Michael Moritz of Sequoia Capital donated over $3 million, including $1.5 million to Pacronym which backs Democrats in closely contested states.
- Jessica Livingstone co-founder of Y Combinator contributed $5 million to Tech for Campaigns, providing digital and technical assistance to the Democrats.
The biggest Republican funder in tech was Peter Thiel, who donated over $2 million to Free Forever PAC.
Some retired executives and lesser known names including Irwin Jacobs and Kenneth Duda also contributed to PACs supporting Biden. Marc Merrill contributed over $1 million to Unite America, a group that supported congressional candidates from both the parties.
Source CNBC
