Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, co-founders of prolific crypto venture investor a16z, plan to make large donations in support of former United States President Donald Trump’s bid for the White House, according to a Tuesday report by The Information.
The announcement, which the co-founders reportedly shared with a16z employees in an internal email, comes in the wake of Trump’s selection of Ohio Senator J.D. Vance as his Vice Presidential nominee. Neither of the co-founders previously disclosed which candidate they planned to support in the November U.S. presidential elections.
Andreessen and Horowitz are among an expanding roster of venture capitalists and technology executives to come out in favor of Trump by donating to America PAC, a pro-Trump political action committee, according to a report by the Financial Times. The PAC has reportedly raised almost $9 million so far from Silicon Valley insiders.
Trump’s choice of Vance as running mate has bolstered the Republican presidential candidate’s growing support in Silicon Valley. In a post on the X platform, Tesla CEO Elon Musk referred to Trump’s vice president nomination as an “excellent decision” shortly after officially endorsing the former president’s campaign on Sunday.
Vance is a seasoned venture capitalist and is among the Senate’s most outspoken advocates of crypto. He is rated as a strong supporter of the industry by Stand With Crypto, an advocacy group created by Coinbase, in which a16z is a shareholder.
A16z has poured upward of $7 billion into Web3 since 2013 and closed its fourth fund in 2022 with $4.5 billion in capital. The firm’s expansive crypto portfolio includes stakes in Avalanche, Coinbase, EigenLayer, Lido, MakerDAO, Optimism and Uniswap, among others.
In June, Vance circulated draft Senate legislation that was reportedly even more crypto-friendly than the House’s industry-backed Financial Innovation and Technology for the 21st Century Act (FIT21). He has also loudly condemned actions taken by the U.S. Securities and Exchange against crypto companies.
Trump has been aggressively wooing the crypto industry since May, when he declared that America “must be the leader in the [crypto] field, there is no second place,” on Truth Social — a social media platform owned by Trump Media and Technology Group. The Republican Party added a pro-crypto stance to its official platform in early July.