Tech giants make big bets as a divided America heads to the polls
Tech billionaires have spent tens of millions of dollars on supporting candidates in the US presidential race – making not just political donations but big bets on the outcome. Here’s why.
Tech billionaires have spent tens of millions of dollars on supporting candidates in the US presidential race – making not just political donations but big bets on the outcome as a divided America headed to the polls.
Some have quietly put their money behind candidates, like Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, who tipped $US50m ($75.3m) into a not-for-profit group that supports Kamala Harris – a donation that was reportedly to have been kept under wraps.
Others have been more outspoken, none more so than Tesla chief executive Elon Musk, who is one of Donald Trump’s biggest financial backers and has amplified Mr Trump’s claims of election fraud in the lead-up to the poll and ran a lottery in which he awarded $US1m a day to a registered swing state voter.
In return, Mr Trump has said he would appoint Mr Musk as the head of a new government efficiency commission if elected, with the South African-born businessman vowing to slash trillions of dollars of the US federal budget.
Then there is Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, who tried to appear neutral, ending presidential endorsements in the Washington Post – the newspaper he bought for $US250m in 2013 – only for the move to backfire and prompt accusations that he was attempting to gain favour with Mr Trump. Mr Bezos denied such claims.
Others were too timid to even make seemingly innocuous comments about the election out of fear of retribution.
Mr Trump has made scores of threats that he would prosecute, imprison or punish his perceived enemies.
“Those involved in unscrupulous behavior will be sought out, caught, and prosecuted at levels, unfortunately, never seen before in our Country,” wrote on social media last month.
There were big economic stakes surrounding the US poll. NASA awarded Mr Musk’s SpaceX a $US843m contract to “de-orbit”, removing the International Space Station when it’s decommissioned at the end of the decade. SpaceX has US government contracts worth more than $US15bn.
Amazon Web Service was also awarded a 10-year $US10bn National Security Agency contract in 2022, among other lucrative government work.
Then there are the myriad antitrust cases launched by the Department of Justice, which could break up Google, and have targeted Microsoft, Amazon, Meta and Apple.
And there is a reason why Musk has made a big bet on Mr Trump. Tesla – chaired by Australian Robyn Denholm – and Musk’s social media platform X are subject to 20 investigations and reviews, according to The New York Times.
These include the US Securities and Exchange Commission probing Mr Musk’s takeover of Twitter in 2022, since rebranded X. The US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is also investigating Tesla’s “full self-driving system” after reports of crashes in fog and dusty conditions.
For Mr Musk, he believes autonomous taxis and humanoid robots can deliver riches for Tesla, catapulting it from a $US787.88bn to a $US25 trillion company.
“Robotic taxis makes Tesla about a $US5 trillion company,” Mr Musk told the 8th Future Investment Initiative conference in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, last week. “The Optimus Robot, I think, makes Tesla a $US25 trillion company.”
So what’s likely to happen?
Under Ms Harris, these cases were likely to continue, while Mr Trump signalled he would take a different approach. Last month, he said he may not break up Google if he regained the presidency, saying it was key to contain China.
“China is afraid of Google,” Mr Trump told Bloomberg News, despite saying that he believed its search engine was rigged for showing “bad stories” about him. But Trump argues that it's better for the US to have these companies than China.
Mr Trump has also vowed to redirect “trillions of dollars” of US taxpayer funds that have been earmarked for low-carbon energy projects under the Inflation Reduction Act away from the scheme, branding it a “green new scam”.
He has particularly taken aim at an $US7500 tax credit on electric vehicle subsidies, which could affect Tesla. But Mr Musk wrote on X in August after Trump said “tax credits and tax incentives are not generally a very good thing” that he was “willing to serve”.
Mr Musk told Mr Trump’s supporters at a rally at Madison Square gardens last month that if he became head of a government efficiency commission under a Trump presidency, he would shave “at least $US2 trillion” off the US Federal Budget.
“At the end of the day, you’re being taxed. All government spending is taxation. Your money is being wasted. And the department of government efficiency is going to fix that.”
For his part, Mr Bezos has attempted to avoid any perception of bias, prompting him to end presidential endorsements in the Washington Post, which said was a “principled decision” despite more than 200,000 readers of the newspaper cancelling their subscriptions as a result.
“Let me give an analogy. Voting machines must meet two requirements. They must count the vote accurately, and people must believe they count the vote accurately. The second requirement is distinct from and just as important as the first,” Mr Bezos wrote in an essay published in the Washington Post.
“Likewise with newspapers. We must be accurate, and we must be believed to be accurate. It’s a bitter pill to swallow, but we are failing on the second requirement. Most people believe the media is biased. Anyone who doesn’t see this is paying scant attention to reality.
“What presidential endorsements actually do is create a perception of bias. A perception of non-independence. Ending them is a principled decision, and it’s the right one.”
Meanwhile, Climate Tech Partners’ Tom Kline and Patrick Sieb – formerly of Investible – said Mr Trunp won’t necessarily be bad for climate tech.
“We’re seeing lots of articles and rhetoric around ‘oh, it’s going to be terrible if Trump gets in’ like ‘it’s not going to be a great outcome for the world’. But a lot of policies that are in place, they will still remain, and he can’t easily unwind a bunch of them,” Mr Kline said.
“But then also, I think looking at what happened last time he was in power is a really good anecdote of what might happen again.
“Fundamentally, the listed space in climate did really well, then the states really stepped up, individual companies did a lot.”
From 2016 to 2019, global climate tech venture capital investment almost tripled from $US6.6bn to $US16.3bn, according to PwC.