For many years, Republicans and staunch supporters of former President Trump have not been very popular in Silicon Valley circles.

But sentiment has shifted in recent weeks, with conservative elements of San Francisco's tech industry increasingly vocal in their support for the Trump-Vance pair.

Last month, Trump raised $12 million at a fundraiser at the Pacific Heights home of venture capitalist David Sachs, who was visiting San Francisco for the first time in at least a decade. Sachs said he hoped the event would be a “touch-start” for the debate around Trump and create “a chain of goodwill where all of a sudden it becomes acceptable to admit the truth.”

And on Tuesday, Sax list Seventeen notable figures from the technology industry, including Tesla CEO Elon Musk, Sequoia Capital partner Doug Leone and Ben Horowitz, general partner at prominent venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, posted a photo of President Trump giving a thumbs up on social media platform X (formerly Twitter). “Come on in, the water is warm,” Sachs wrote.

Many of these tech investors welcomed the nomination of Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance, a Silicon Valley-trained venture capitalist, as Trump's running mate, citing a shared belief that he would help roll back regulations that they believe could stifle innovation in artificial intelligence and cryptocurrencies.

“The future of our businesses, the future of new technologies and the future of America is literally at stake,” Horowitz said Tuesday. “The Ben & Mark Show” Podcast“In terms of technology, we think Donald Trump is the right choice. Sorry, mom, I know this is going to upset you, but we had to do it.”

But Governor Gavin Newsom said Silicon Valley's rightward shift in the presidential election has been “overstated.”

“I don't believe this is an epidemic at all. These groups have always existed,” Newsom said in an interview Tuesday while touring prisons in Northern California. “There's been libertarian energy in Silicon Valley for decades, and frankly, I don't see a lot of change.”

Newsom, who served as San Francisco mayor from 2004 to 2011 and has close ties to the tech industry, said Silicon Valley donors who support Trump are “focused on their own financial interests and are very transactional in their business practices.”

Still, while Silicon Valley has long been home to prominent conservatives such as Peter Thiel and Sachs, the enthusiastic support for a Trump-Vance administration from San Francisco’s tech community is striking.

The Bay Area is well known nationally for its progressive politics and is the hometown of prominent Democrats such as the late Sen. Dianne Feinstein, former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Newsom and Vice President Kamala Harris, and social media companies in the Bay Area such as Meta (formerly Facebook) have come under fire from Republican lawmakers who accuse them of censoring conservative views and Trump.

The region is overwhelmingly represented by Democrats in the state Legislature and in the mayoral offices of San Francisco, San Jose, Berkeley and Oakland, and while Silicon Valley tycoons have donated heavily to Republican and Trump campaigns in recent days, the Bay Area is a classic Democrats' favorite cash cow.

in 202072.6% of Santa Clara County voters supported Joe Biden, while just 25.2% supported Trump.

In September, Biden visited the home of billionaire environmental activist and former hedge fund manager Tom Steyer to raise funds for the Democratic Party, along with LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, a major donor to the Democratic Party. Hosting a fundraiser for BidenSo did venture capitalist and Tesla investor Steve Westley.

Vinod Khosla, an investor who hosted a Bay Area fundraiser for Biden in May, said he is an ardent supporter of the president.

“We must ensure at all costs that don't let that donkey-ass Trump get elected and destroy our democracy,” Khosla said. Bloomberg Events.

But others in Silicon Valley are uncomfortable with Biden for a variety of reasons, including the government's lawsuits against tech giants such as Apple and Google for alleged monopolistic practices.

Some tech investors believe that a continued Biden administration will limit innovation in emerging technologies, undermining the nation's competitiveness in the global tech race and hurting their own economic interests.

They point out that it is unnecessary investigation The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s regulation of cryptocurrency startups and the challenges facing cryptocurrency businesses Funding From the bank.

“This is an unprecedented and brutal attack on an emerging industry,” Marc Andreessen said on “The Ben & Mark Show” podcast, acknowledging his firm as one of the world’s largest crypto investors.

In contrast, the Trump campaign platform called for an end to the “un-American crackdown on cryptocurrencies” and promised to “protect the right to mine Bitcoin and ensure that all Americans have the right to self-custody of their digital assets and trade them free from government oversight or control.”

Trump also said that if elected, he would revoke Biden's executive order on artificial intelligence, saying, “This order stifles innovation in AI and imposes a radical left ideology on the development of this technology. Instead, Republicans will support AI development that is rooted in free speech and human flourishing.” Republican platform.

Another source of frustration among tech investors is Biden's proposed capital gains tax, which would tax individuals with assets worth more than $100 million, which critics say could have an impact on startup founders whose companies' value fluctuates and whose compensation is based on stock options.

“This is completely unthinkable for startups,” Andreessen said. “It's the end of venture capital.”

Representatives for the Biden administration did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Trump's nomination of Vance, who worked with Thiel at Mithril Capital, is expected to further boost his campaign among tech supporters.

According to federal records, Thiel served on Trump's transition team after he won the 2016 presidential election, later supported Vance during his presidential run and poured $10 million into Vance's fund when he ran for Senate in Ohio in 2022.

Mr. Sachs donated $1 million to a political action committee supporting Mr. Vance and co-hosted a fundraiser in Miami for Mr. Vance and eight other Republican Senate candidates. Mr. Vance, who lived briefly in San Francisco, calls Mr. Sachs “one of my closest confidants” in politics.

“He's considered one of them,” said Olaf Gross, CEO of the think tank Cambrian Futures and a faculty member at the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley. “His supporters are a very rarefied elite at the top of the food chain of Silicon Valley entrepreneurship and venture capital.”

Silicon Valley leaders have begun fundraising for America PAC, a new political action committee that supports President Trump's reelection, and reports spending $7.7 million in the past three months on door-to-door canvassing, text messaging and get-out-the-vote efforts.

The group's website and social media accounts focus on voter registration and voter turnout, and feature a 15-second video of Trump saying “absentee voting, early voting and voting on Election Day are all good options.”

Musk has pledged to donate $45 million to the organization every month through November, multiple media outlets reported this week. Other Silicon Valley donors to the organization include cryptocurrency executives Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, Palantir Technologies co-founder Joe Lonsdale and Sequoia Capital partner Sean Maguire, according to federal filings.

Republicans say a growing number of Bay Area businesses are frustrated with the local government's response to crime and other problems in San Francisco.

“These companies are being weakened by Democratic policies,” said Harmeet Dhillon, a San Francisco lawyer and Republican National Committee member from California who serves as an official legal representative for the Trump campaign. “They have to make the decisions that are best for them. That's the calculation I've seen.”

Some Trump supporters, like Andreessen, previously supported other Democratic presidential candidates, including Hillary Clinton. Biden's Democratic Party is divided over whether he should be the next president, due to concerns about his age.

“They're voting with their wallets, but by showing they're not aligned with Democratic policies and the chaos the Democrats are wreaking on our country, they're sending a message to tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of working people that it's okay to be a Republican,” Dillon said.

Times researcher Scott Wilson contributed to this report.