For weeks, it was looking like the tech industry was going red this election, with some of the loudest investors in Silicon Valley throwing their support behind Donald Trump. Then came a series of events that shows Kamala Harris still has friends in high-tech places.
It started with LinkedIn cofounder Reid Hoffman declaring his support for Harris the same day that Biden ended his campaign. Reed Hastings, a cofounder of Netflix, poured $7 million into her campaign coffers last week. On Wednesday, the website VCs for Kamala launched with more than a hundred venture capitalists who pledged to vote and gather donations for Harris.
Now, executives from Google, Netflix, and OpenAI have banded together to host a fundraiser for Harris in Washington, DC, later this month.
The August 27 reception will feature special guests Josh Hsu, who had worked as Harris’s chief legal adviser in the White House, and Rohini Kosoglu, who was a domestic policy advisor to the vice president, according to a website for the fundraiser seen by Business Insider. A $500 donation is the cost of admission, though tickets range up to $6,600.
The tech-savvy hosting committee includes executives at Google, Netflix, and OpenAI who work in policy roles, as well as high-ranking employees of JPMorgan, McKinsey & Company, and Omidyar Network, a foundation and impact investing fund founded by eBay founder Pierre Omidyar. Representatives for Netflix and OpenAI did not respond to requests for comment on Friday. A spokesperson for Google declined to comment.
The Harris campaign posted eye-popping July fundraising numbers that were sparked in part by new enthusiasm among Gen Z and millennial donors. The vice president collected $310 million in July and now has $377 million in her war chest, according to a press release from her campaign.
