Inside Silicon Valley’s Political Rift

Silicon Valley is often seen as closely aligned to Democrats, but the willingness of some big names to publicly back Donald Trump in this election has prompted a rift between former colleagues and friends.Credit…Kenny Holston/The New York Times; Haiyun Jiang for The New York Times

How the election is dividing tech

The tech world has long been divided by rivalries: Macs versus PCs, open source versus closed source. Now perhaps the biggest partition is political.

The presidential election has pit moguls and former colleagues like Elon Musk and Reid Hoffman against one another, The Times’s Ryan Mac, Erin Griffith and Mike Isaac report. It’s a reminder, as DealBook has noted, that Silicon Valley’s libertarian wing is feeling more emboldened to flex its money and influence to buck what has become a traditionally Democratic consensus.

Who’s who: Some of the most vocal Democratic donors among the tech elite are Hoffman; Vinod Khosla, the venture capitalist; Aaron Levie, the C.E.O. of Box; and the investor Roger McNamee. On the Republican side are a camp of libertarians that includes Musk and the investors Peter Thiel, David Sacks, Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz.

Then there are those staying neutral, including Mark Zuckerberg of Meta, who are ostensibly trying to avoid antagonizing whoever wins in November.

The election has fomented clashes between longtime colleagues, including venture capitalists who have invested side by side and — in the case of Hoffman, Musk, Sacks and Thiel — part of the so-called PayPal Mafia who worked together at the payments company.

After McNamee called out Andreessen and Horowitz on X for backing Donald Trump, Horowitz shot back: “Really Roger? We’ve know 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?”