With Trump VP pick J.D. Vance, Silicon Valley conservatives land a ‘tech bro’ on the ticket By Reuters

By Alexandra Ulmer and Don Chmielewski

MILWAUKEE (Reuters) – Donald Trump’s pick of J.D. Vance as his running mate raised hopes among Silicon Valley conservatives on Tuesday that they might benefit from having a fellow tech entrepreneur within reach of the White House for the first time.

“We have a former tech investor in the White House. The greatest country on Earth,” wrote Delyan Asparuhov, a partner at billionaire investor Peter Thiel’s venture capital firm Founders Fund, on social media site X.

Vance, the author of the best-selling memoir “Hillbilly Elegy,” a Yale Law School graduate who later became a San Francisco venture capitalist, had a rapid rise in American politics.

At the age of thirty-nine, he served only two years in the U.S. Senate, representing Ohio.

The Republican National Convention on Monday formally nominated Trump and Vance to run against Democratic President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris in the Nov. 5 election.

Some right-leaning investors have begun re-circulating old tweets from Vance and have set their sights on friendlier regulations ranging from artificial intelligence to cryptocurrencies.

“He has a direct line to some important influencers as he evaluates or considers some of the policies related to technology,” said Matt Murphy, a partner at venture capital firm Menlo Ventures, noting the traditional divide between Washington and Silicon Valley.

During the campaign, Vance used his background to serve as a bridge between Trump associates and wealthy Silicon Valley donors, many of whom opened their wallets to Trump in this election.

Republicans are a minority in the overwhelmingly left-leaning San Francisco Bay Area, though conservatives in the tech industry, including Thiel, entrepreneur Marc Andreessen and entrepreneur Elon Musk, have begun to raise their voices more.

Bolstered by the promise of technology, they complain about what they see as unnecessary restrictions on their work by progressive politicians and bureaucrats.

Vance has ridden that wave, with the help of Thiel, who pumped about $15 million into Vance’s successful 2022 U.S. Senate campaign and invested in the venture capital firm Naria, which he founded in 2019.

Silicon Valley conservatives say they consider Vance one of their own, even when they disagree with him on some policies.

Despite his background, Vance has said that big tech companies have too much power and has called for breaking up Google, positions that run counter to conservatives who bristle at government regulation.

Cryptocurrency investor and venture capitalist Tim Draper, who backed former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley in the Republican primary, said he hoped Vance would be “more of an investor than a lawyer.”

“A good understanding of how freedom and startups drive growth in our economy is critical to the continued success of Silicon Valley, our nation’s ‘golden goose,’” Draper said.

Vance’s crypto investments are a sign that he “maybe understands (intuitively) the economy of the future to some extent,” Draper said, using a term popular in tech circles. Grok is also the name of a ChatGPT competitor from Musk’s startup xAI.

According to his October 2023 federal disclosure, Vance was holding more than $100,000 as of 2022.

The Trump-Vance campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Vance’s ties to Silicon Valley, his proposed technology policies and whether he still owns cryptocurrencies.

Asked whether the Trump-Vance ticket would seek to break up Google, Donald Jr., Trump’s son and adviser who favored Vance for the No. 2 job, told Reuters at the conference in Milwaukee: “I’ll let them discuss some of the intricacies of the platform … but I like his (Vance’s) understanding of technology.”

Vance introduced Donald Trump Jr. to businessman and investor David Sachs and helped organize a June fundraiser at Sachs’s San Francisco mansion that raised $12 million for the former president.

Sachs thanked Vance in his remarks at the event, according to a source familiar with the matter, saying, “This all started when J.D. Vance called us and asked if we could host an event for President Trump.”

The former president used the June event to present himself as a champion of cryptocurrencies and criticize Democratic attempts to regulate the sector, Reuters reported at the time.