Workers in the tech sector are backing Democratic nominee Vice President Kamala Harris, even as several prominent tech moguls have thrown their support behind former President Donald Trump.
Workers at Google parent Alphabet, Amazon and Microsoft are donating millions of dollars to Harris’ campaign, and those contributions outpace those of employees giving to the Trump campaign, according to data by political watchdog group OpenSecrets. The data includes donations made by company employees and owners, as well as workers’ and owners’ immediate family members.
Employees at Alphabet have donated over $2.16 million to Harris’ campaign, which is almost 40 times as much as they have given to Trump. Amazon and Microsoft employees and family members have donated $1 million and $1.1 million, respectively, to the Harris campaign.
Those amounts are significantly more than the $116,000 from Amazon workers and the $88,000 from Microsoft workers, as well as their family members, given to the Trump campaign.
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Workers at Facebook parent Meta and Apple and their family members have not reached the $1 million mark in donations to the Harris campaign yet, but they are similarly outpacing donations to Trump. Donations from Meta workers to Harris have amounted to $835,000 versus $25,000 to Trump, while at Apple, workers’ donations to Harris have reached $861,000 compared to $44,000 for Trump.
| Ticker | Security | Last | Change | Change % |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| AMZN | AMAZON.COM INC. | 177.89 | +4.56 | +2.63% |
| AAPL | APPLE INC. | 222.38 | +1.53 | +0.69% |
| GOOGL | ALPHABET INC. | 157.24 | +0.79 | +0.50% |
| MSFT | MICROSOFT CORP. | 408.39 | -0.51 | -0.12% |
| META | META PLATFORMS INC. | 516.86 | +4.12 | +0.80% |
| TSLA | TESLA INC. | 230.17 | +10.76 | +4.90% |
Despite the groundswell of support for Harris among rank-and-file tech workers, tech leaders like billionaire entrepreneur and Tesla CEO Elon Musk and venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz’s co-founders, Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, have backed Trump’s campaign.
Musk was reportedly giving a pro-Trump super PAC up to $45 million a month, although he pushed back on those reports and said his contributions are at a “much lower level.”
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Other Silicon Valley tech titans who have supported Trump’s campaign include Palantir Technologies co-founder Joe Lonsdale, venture capitalist David Sacks and the co-founders of cryptocurrency exchange Gemini, Tyler and Cameron Wiklevoss.
To push back on the emerging support for Trump among tech sector leaders, a group of more than 100 venture capitalists – including LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman – signed on to a public letter in early August that endorsed Harris.
Reuters contributed to this report.
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