Enterprise capitalist Ben Horowitz, who beforehand backed former President Donald Trump’s re-election bid, is now planning to make a “important” donation to Vice President Kamala Harris’ presidential marketing campaign.
Axios bought the news on the about-face, which comes simply months after Horowitz and his enterprise associate, Marc Andreessen, made the case in a YouTube video that Trump was one of the best guess for the tech trade, particularly cryptocurrency.
At the moment, President Joe Biden was nonetheless operating for re-election.
“It’s been powerful,” Andreessen mentioned in July. “This has been a brutal assault in a nascent trade that I’ve simply… I’ve by no means skilled earlier than… it’s been unimaginable to make progress on this with the White Home.”
Within the dialog with Andreesen, Horowitz made the unfounded declare that the Biden administration “subverted the rule of legislation to assault the crypto trade.”
“I imply, like, we’re coping with that proper now and that is most likely essentially the most emotional matter,” he mentioned, with out mentioning some other situation at stake come Nov. 5.
As soon as Harris entered the race in late July, Horowitz had a change of coronary heart.
In an e-mail he despatched to Andreesen Horowitz staff on Friday, Horowitz shared that he and his spouse, Felicia, have identified Harris for over a decade and developed a friendship.
In reality, throughout the agency’s “early days,” Harris helped out with some occasions at his home.
Horowitz mentioned he’s had some encouraging chats with the Democratic nominee about her tech insurance policies.
“From a agency perspective, we proceed to solely take positions in line with our Little Tech Agenda and the way the varied candidates that assist or don’t assist insurance policies to construct a robust startup know-how trade,” Horowitz mentioned.
Horowitz didn’t miss the chance to throw shade on the Biden administration, calling its tech insurance policies “exceptionally damaging,” particularly in areas like crypto, blockchain and synthetic intelligence. So, whereas he’s hopeful {that a} Harris presidency might be a breath of contemporary air, he’s nonetheless ready to see if she’ll come by way of for the tech world.
Different enterprise capitalists have additionally introduced assist for Harris, together with LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman OpenAI investor Ron Conway and Mark Cuban, minority proprietor of the Dallas Mavericks.
Billionaire Elon Musk, Sequoia Capital’s Shaun Maguire and the Winklevoss twins stay ardent supporters of Trump.