Silicon Valley venture capitalists fund Trump, saying he 'backs crypto'
The Guardian|July 18, 2024
The co-founders of Silicon Valley's most prominent venture capital firm have announced their support for Donald Trump's bid for re-election, and plan to make substantial donations to back him further.
Alex Hern
Silicon Valley venture capitalists fund Trump, saying he 'backs crypto'

Ben Horowitz and Marc Andreessen, of Andreessen-Horowitz, known as A16Z, revealed their plans in a sprawling 90-minute video in which they argued that the future of "American innovation" required a Trump victory.

While their financial support is not expected to equal that of the billionaire Elon Musk, who announced plans to donate $45m a month to back the former president, the two men are seen as intellectual centres of the burgeoning rightwing of the American tech scene.

In a blogpost published in June, they argued that "bad government policies are now the #1 threat to Little Tech", the startups that they see as the engine of the US economy. They expressed concern about over-regulation, particularly of cryptocurrency, and proposals to tax unrealised capital gains, as well as criticising the US government's failure to use its buying power to back startups over incumbents "in critical sectors like defense and intelligence".

This story is from the July 18, 2024 edition of The Guardian.

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This story is from the July 18, 2024 edition of The Guardian.

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