- The growing partisan divide in Silicon Valley is playing out in messy, public social media battles.
- Insults have grown personal, a new trend in a sector that usually bickers in private.
- The vast wealth in Silicon Valley simmers under the debates and emergent partisan divide.
In a LinkedIn post from late July, venture capitalist Rob Day reminded his followers that "we as longtime investors tend not to criticize each other."
During this election cycle, at least, that's no longer the case. Some of Silicon Valley's biggest names are now waging partisan battles for all the internet to see.
Day was reacting to famed investors Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, who declared their support for former President Donald Trump in a nearly 90-minute podcast episode, and the resulting dispute that played out mostly on social media.
Though Silicon Valley, nestled in the deep-blue Bay Area, has long been considered a liberal bastion, Andreessen and Horowitz are part of a rightward tilt among some of tech's biggest names. They're joined by Tesla CEO Elon Musk, venture capitalist David Sacks, and PayPal cofounder Peter Thiel, among others.
"I think the divide is new, but the principles on which it's built are not," said Fred Turner, a communications professor at Stanford University who recently co-authored the book "Seeing Silicon Valley: Life Inside a Fraying America."
Turner said that many successful tech companies are based on a technocratic ideology in which one expert exerts almost singular dominance: "The deep story, I think, is the way in which success in technocratic enterprise can seem to people on the outside to be models for political life."
As disagreements swirl about regulation, AI safety, and crypto crackdowns, Silicon Valley's darlings are becoming more invested in — and vocal about — politics overall. Musk exemplifies this transformation. He said in 2015 that he tried to avoid getting involved in Washington but is now supporting Trump's campaign with his words and his wallet.
This shift has ignited public spats for all to witness.
Debates that used to be held in private are now public
Silicon Valley used to air its dirty laundry in private, if at all, rather than in lengthy threads on X.
"I think that there's conversations in public among circles that normally have those in private, but I'm not a part of that," Leslie Feinzaig, a venture capitalist who founded the group VCsForKamala, told Business Insider. In part, she formed the organization in response to her sector's rightward shift and the resulting fallout.
Many in Silicon Valley, such as LinkedIn cofounder Reid Hoffman and Box CEO Aaron Levie, have aligned themselves against Trump. Some have even joined VCsForKamala, but not all of them share Feinzaig's commitment to staying out of public spats.
Hoffman and Sacks, both members of the so-called PayPal mafia who once worked side-by-side, are now publicly feuding over politics.
Sacks shared on June 6 a 23-paragraph post on X endorsing Trump and announcing a fundraising event for the former president. Hoffman wasted no time responding with a lengthy social media post of his own, in which he said that Sacks "got it wrong on just about every count."
Hoffman attacked Sacks' multi-part argument and didn't mince words: "In tech, we call this 'being wrong.'"
That was only the beginning.
A new tone to Silicon Valley political discourse
The public disputes intensified after Andreessen and Horowitz released their podcast episode on July 16.
Disagreements again spilled onto X when venture capitalist Roger McNamee shared an article titled, "The Moral Bankruptcy of Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz."
"Really Roger? We've known each other for 25 years, you invested in my company, you have my cell #, and your very first idea when we disagree is to attack me in a tweet? Good to know I guess," Horowitz responded.
A day later, the insults got more personal.
Paul Graham, the computer scientist and founder of venture capital firm Y Combinator, asked in a now-deleted post whether Sacks is "the most evil person in Silicon Valley."
Sacks didn't roll over. In an X post of his own, he called Graham "a bully and maybe something much worse."
Other tech figures, including OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, began to take sides, throwing their weight behind either Graham or Sacks and drawing even more attention to the public fight.
Then, on July 31, David Marcus, the former president of PayPal, decided that it was his turn to post a detailed open letter on X. He explained why he's endorsing Trump, saying that he "broke free" from old mental frameworks and that he has undergone "a gradual political 180."
Levie, the Box CEO, responded: "Lots of fair feedback here that I hope the democrats listen to." Earlier that day, Levie had posted separately on X that he saw a legitimate shift in Silicon Valley toward Harris, who had just become the presumptive nominee after President Joe Biden dropped out of the race. Leaders saw her, he said, as "a more stable, pro tech, pro business President" compared to Trump.
Despite Levie's apparent interest in listening and speaking across the partisan divide, Joe Lonsdale, the cofounder of Palantir, shot back that the argument was "silly" and called Harris anti-business.
"VCs went from very few pro-Trump to about half!" Lonsdale said. Levie replied, and other tech leaders chimed in on the drawn-out thread.
While some of the back-and-forth is taking place on more organized forums and in more careful language — Hoffman, for example, published an op-ed in The Economist — most of it is playing out in the messy, typo-ridden, impulsive world of social media.
"I just felt like in our industry the conversation had turned very mudsling-y, and that's not at all anything I want to be a part of," Feinzaig, who organized VCsForKamala, said of the recent trend.
Feinzaig said she doesn't think Silicon Valley is turning conservative, but rather that people have nuanced views and that conservative voices have recently become more comfortable speaking out.
Money simmers beneath the partisan divide
Turner, the Stanford professor, attributes some of the shift to purely monetary incentives.
"These leaders are about making money," he said. "If the political winds shift right in Washington, it can behoove tech leaders to shift to the right as well."
The relationship, he said, does not only go in one direction, as politicians are well attuned to the vast wealth nestled in Northern California.
"Money, money, money makes the world go round!" he said, quoting the musical "Cabaret." "It just does. Politicians need money in amounts that, for some Silicon Valley leaders like Elon Musk, are actually trivial. I think that that's something that's really important to remember."
Already, that money is talking. Andreessen and Horowitz announced that they're giving millions to Trump. Reed Hastings, the cofounder of Netflix, donated $7 million to a PAC affiliated with Harris.