Choice between Trump and Harris has Silicon Valley's big investors fracturing

The upcoming presidential election is generating a deep divide in Silicon Valley and, where some tech leaders and investors, who have historically supported Democratic candidates, are now leaning toward the Republican candidate: former President Donald Trump.

Just look to Tesla or SpaceX, with the world's richest man, Elon Musk, who not only announced that he will back Trump, but is actively campaigning on X (formerly Twitter) while questioning the policies of the Biden-Harris Administration.

Repeatedly, Musk explained that he will endorse the former Republican president in this election despite considering himself a classic "liberal" and voting for Democratic candidates in the past. In particular, the tycoon questioned the "woke mind virus," Biden's border policies, inflation problems and also the left-leaning media and Democrats.

Musk's endorsement, no doubt, is a historic event, especially considering that big American billionaires, such as Jeff Bezos, Michael Bloomberg and Reid Hoffman have usually publicly endorsed Democratic candidates. But on this occasion, Trump broke slightly with this historical trend.

For example, David Sacks, former chief investment officer of PayPal and general partner of Craft Ventures, is one of Trump's biggest supporters in the tech world. Last June he explained why he backed the former president, citing the economy, the legal war, the war in Ukraine and the border as the main issues that led him to endorse the former president.

But Sacks and Musk, perhaps the two best-known Trump supporters, aren't the only ones.

Peter Thiel, investor and co-founder of PayPal; Ben Horowitz, co-founder of venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz; Shaun Maguire, partner at Sequoia Capital;Joe Lonsdale, co-founder of Palantir; Doug Leone, billionaire venture capitalist; John Hering, co-founder of Lookout and the Winklevoss twins are just some of the big investors in the tech world who are backing former President Trump.

Another billionaire who announced his endorsement of Trump is billionaire and hedge fund executive Bill Ackman, who according to Forbes has a net worth of just over $4 billion and has been highly critical of the Biden-Harris Administration publicly.

However, although several prominent figures in Silicon Valley and the tech world have endorsed Trump, the reality is that, following Biden's resignation and the rise of Kamala Harris as the official candidate, Democrats have regained significant ground in this sector.

According to an extensive report by Politico, since Harris replaced Biden, doubt among the sector's tech giants about their presidential candidate has "vanished."

"As the Democratic nominee, the California tech world is returning to Kamala Harris’ side — if she can form a strong enough platform that speaks to their main concerns," the media outlet reads. "Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign is drawing from a reservoir of her former big-dollar donors who still hadn’t donated when President Joe Biden was leading the ticket. And they represent major players from a key homegrown industry for the California native: tech."

According to a Politico analysis, since Biden stepped down on July 21, Harris raised more than $59 million from people nationally during the rest of July. Of that total number, 20% of the donations, or $12.5 million, came from California, Harris' home state.

In particular, the technology industry played a major role in supporting Harris from California.

For example, employees of Google and its parent company, Alphabet, donated $262,000; employees of Apple gave $170,000 and workers at Meta put $81,000 to the Democratic candidate's cause.

But employees of big tech companies aren't the only ones putting money into Harris' fund.

Aaron Levie, chief executive of Box; and Reid Hoffman, co-founder of LinkedIn; are two of the big names backing Harris, who has already received praise from top moguls such as Bill Gates.

Josh Felser, climate technology investor; Waseem Daher, founder of a San Francisco-based startup and Garry Tan, head of startup accelerator Y Combinator; are other names that have backed the Democratic candidate.

However, despite gathering major endorsements, several tech workers have started groups such as Tech4Kamala, VCs for Kamala and Founders for Kamala to mobilize support for Harris, as reported by the Wall Street Journal.

One of those people who initiated efforts to seek support for Harris admitted that there is a lot of polarization in the industry.

"We’re witnessing an unprecedented polarization," said Edda Collins Coleman, co-founder of Tech4Kamala.

This situation has led to name-calling and even business relationship problems for investors and tech leaders who support Harris and Trump respectively.

For example, Box's Aaron Levie suggested that investor David Sacks was under the effects of cough syrup for supporting Trump.

At the time, Sacks once posted on X a photo of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Trump shaking hands and wrote, "Dream team."

"One of those dreams when you took NyQuil," Levie responded.

"You swooned because a nominee who never got a single vote and won’t do an interview read the word ‘founder’ from a teleprompter. Sit down," Sacks admonished.

Also, according to the WSJ, various green tech investors who admired Musk "are calling him a traitor to the cause for siding with Trump."

This polarization in Silicon Valley could deepen further as the presidential election approaches on November 5.