Two Tech Moguls Split on Trump

Elon Musk appeared with Donald Trump at a rally and doubled down on his support for the Republican.Credit…Doug Mills/The New York Times

A top investor backs away from Trump

The presidential election is less than a month away, but that’s still plenty of time for surprises to shake up the excruciatingly tight race. The past few days brought some from the tech community.

Elon Musk appeared at a Donald Trump rally on Saturday, bringing his intense online rhetoric to the real world. But the bigger surprise came the day before, when Ben Horowitz, a venture capital mogul who endorsed Trump over the summer, revealed that he would give money to help elect Vice President Kamala Harris.

Musk said, “I’m not just MAGA, I’m dark MAGA,” onstage at the Trump rally, in Butler, Penn. The appearance had some symbolism: The event was at the same venue where a gunman had shot at Trump in July, an attack that prompted Musk to publicly endorse the Republican candidate.

An animated Musk repeated many of the sort of things he regularly says online without providing evidence, including claims that Democrats were seeking to restrict free speech and disenfranchise voters.

Silicon Valley was more abuzz about Horowitz’s about-face. The venture capitalist told his firm, Andreessen Horowitz, on Friday that he and his wife, Felicia, planned to make “a significant donation to entities who support the Harris Walz campaign.”

It was a remarkable turn for Horowitz, who, along with Musk, was for months considered part of the tech elite’s pro-Trump arm. In July, Horowitz and Marc Andreessen, his firm’s co-founder, endorsed the former president because of what they called the Biden administration’s bad tech policy, including on crypto and artificial intelligence.