I recently reported on the political donations of Anthropic co-founder Tom Brown, who’s emerged as the company’s Designated Conservative. A Wall Street Journal profile referred to Brown as a Republican, which I suspect he was pleased to read.
I traced Brown’s sparse political donations over the years—which were not to Republican candidates—and his very recent pivot, which coincides with Anthropic’s clammy efforts to get into the good graces of the Trump Administration. Chief among Brown’s donations: $250,000 to the Senate Leadership Fund, a Republican super PAC. His wife Michelle Valentine, a Silicon Valley investor and entrepreneur, also began donating to Republican causes this year.
The FEC only lists donations to federal candidates and PACs, meaning it does not include donations to gubernatorial candidates or localized races. I checked a bunch of statewide databases to see whether Brown is quietly cutting even more checks to conservatives. As it turns out, he is!
Brown recently donated $5,300 to the gubernatorial campaign of Marsha Blackburn, currently a U.S. Senator who’s running for statewide office in Tennessee. Despite her xenophobic and racist rhetoric, Blackburn attracts the support of Big Tech donors like moths to a flame. In the Senate, Blackburn serves on multiple tech subcommittees. As a candidate for governor, she’s indicated that Tennessee will continue to welcome more and more data centers. “Let me be direct: Data centers are going to be a good and important part of Tennessee’s economic growth, but we’ve got to be thoughtful about their placement,” she said in June.
Blackburn has scored donations from other Anthropic executives and employees, including ostensibly liberal ones. Brown’s $5,300 stands out for its timing: other Anthropic donations arrived during the same week in late June, implying a coordinated effort and/or a Blackburn fundraiser. At the time, Blackburn actually did need more money; she was locked in a tight primary against other conservative opponents.
But Brown’s donation was received on September 7, a month after Blackburn had already clinched the GOP nomination. Even a blue tsunami will not imperil Blackburn’s chances of becoming Tennessee’s next governor; Brown’s donation was for the love of the game (and a mutual love of data centers).
Interestingly, Brown appears to have dropped a larger donation—$25,000—to a group called Project Red TX, which says that it “has successfully recruited a robust network of candidates and seen dozens of county-level offices flip Republican!” The Washington Sun covered the group’s aims during the 2024 election: “Project Red TX has recruited hundreds of candidates for small local races in South and West Texas.”
I say “appears” because Brown’s listed occupation on the donation form is “engineer,” rather than what he usually marks down (“co-founder,” “chief compute officer,” and “executive”). That said, I couldn’t find another Thomas B. Brown—his correct middle initial included—who works at Anthropic and has a San Francisco zip code. I certainly don’t think $25,000 is a typical donation for a regular ol’ engineer, even a well-compensated one. Brown is also literally an engineer. He’s just advanced a few notches above that in his career, and should probably list a more senior title on his donation forms if he’s going to wade into local Texas politics.
Is a Tech Billionaire Capable of Buyer’s Remorse After Ramaswamy Ads?
Ratmir Timashev isn’t world-renowned, but he’s a very wealthy man. He grew up in the USSR, then immigrated to the United States; in 1996, he obtained a master’s degree in chemical physics at Ohio State University. He cofounded a few software and data management companies, one of which sold for $5 billion. He’s now in the venture capital and AI business, and has a reported net worth of $5.4 billion.
Timashev strikes me as the sort of tech billionaire who prefers to keep a low profile. He’ll do magazine interviews to talk about his philanthropic interests, or perhaps to advance his business goals, but he’s not on X or Instagram. His LinkedIn posts consist of purposely bland hiring announcements and boring leadership advice. Last week, he wrote a guest column for The Columbus Dispatch about a research facility at Ohio State that will be built in his name. (He’s given more than $110 million to his alma mater.)
I briefly mentioned Timashev’s backstory in July, during another political donations roundup for Hard Reset. At the time, he’d just given $5 million to a super PAC called V-PAC. The super PAC supports one candidate: Ohio gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy.
You might have read about Ramaswamy’s “October surprise,” by which I mean his campaign ran one of the most repulsive attack ads in the history of modern American politics. The ad features the mother of Ramaswamy’s opponent, Amy Acton, even though Acton and her mother haven’t spoken in decades. The reason for the estrangement, according to Acton, is that her stepfather repeatedly raped her when she was a child, and after he was arrested, Acton’s mother took his side, not her daughter’s side. In the attack ad, Acton’s mother repeatedly refers to her own daughter as a liar.
The Ramaswamy campaign’s closing message has managed to alienate a broad coalition of conservatives. Ohio Governor Mike DeWine, Ohio Senator Jon Husted, Iowa Senate candidate Ashley Hinson, and former presidential candidate Nikki Haley (who hates Ramaswamy’s guts) all publicly disavowed the ad.
Which brings me back to Timashev, who gave another $5 million to the Ramaswamy super PAC in mid-September. Other than Jeff Yass, who’s unrepentant about his pet causes and massive political donations, no one has given more to V-PAC than Timashev. V-PAC did not make the rancid ad mentioned above—I want to be very clear about that!—but it’s produced other gross ads, including one that alluded to Acton’s outpatient therapy services, which she says she received because she was sexually abused as a child. And again: the super PAC has no other purpose besides supporting Ramaswamy. It’s not divvying up donations to a bunch of other candidates.
FEC records and Ohio’s statewide database do not show other political donations from Timashev during this election cycle or prior election cycles, for that matter. It’s Ramaswamy’s super PAC and that’s it. Timashev’s track record is pretty apolitical. (At least, as much as that’s possible for a tech billionaire.)
Mindful of that context, I thought there was at least a small possibility Timashev would express regret about wading into the political realm for Ramaswamy. I reached out to spokespeople for two of Timashev’s companies—OH.io and EverWorker—and also sent a message to his foundation. I asked why he’s given a total of $10 million to V-PAC, if he thinks the Ramaswamy campaign’s ad is appropriate or not, and if he stands by his support for Ramaswamy.
To be fair to the spokespeople, I’ll note that I emailed on Saturday afternoon, which is not an ideal time to make a request for comment. But also: I gave everyone more than a day to reply, and if they’d asked for an extension, I would’ve granted it.
Unsurprisingly, I didn’t hear a peep from anyone. I will update this post if a response ever arrives. It seems to me, though, that Ramaswamy is going to lose on Nov. 3, and his desperate efforts to impugn Acton will only cause collateral damage to his biggest backers—Timashev included.
California Wealth Tax Antics (and a Sad Prediction)
Building a Better California, the Big Tech PAC that’s hellbent on killing California’s proposed wealth tax, is raising money at a genuinely unbelievable rate. Just this weekend, the PAC recorded $28 million in contributions. I am not the first, nor will I be the last, to point out that this endless spigot of funds could simply be subject to taxation.
There have been some signals that billionaires are preparing for the worst (paying a one-time 5% tax). Last week, the New York Times reported that Mark Zuckerberg threatened to move out of California unless Meta’s board of directors figured out how to “pre-emptively restructure his stock holdings.” Zuckerberg was apparently worried about his voting shares being diluted as a result of him selling stocks to pay for the wealth tax. Don’t worry folks: Meta acquiesced to his power play. Zuck’s iron grip on Meta remains.
My best guess, which is based on limited polling and me putting my pundit hat on, is that the wealth tax ultimately will not be enacted. If Prop. 40 (the wealth tax measure) passes, it can still be undone by Prop. 41 and Prop. 42, which are basically poison-pill measures that billionaires snuck onto the ballot. In the event that either proposition accumulates more votes than Prop. 40, the wealth tax is invalidated. That gives California billionaires three different outs. I do not like those odds, especially coupled with a lack of enthusiasm for candidates at the top of the ticket. (Xavier Becerra is not going to be among the Democrats who outperform expectations next week.)
To give you a sense of how much this ultimately meager wealth tax has turned into an existential threat among oligarchs: Frank Slootman, the billionaire chairman of the board at Snowflake, recently gave $5 million to Building a Better California. A nice chunk of change, certainly, but that’s not the interesting part. On the donation form, Slootman’s address is in Florida, not California. And he’s registered to vote in Montana, according to the state’s voter rolls. This certainly does not preclude him from owning a property (or a bunch of properties) in California, but it’s a fun reminder that some of the billionaires who are most frightened of Prop. 40 aren’t even California voters—or living in the state full-time.
A few more October donations:
Accounting for another two weeks of donations during the first half of the month, Elon Musk has reportedly contributed roughly $420 million during these midterms. That’s more than he contributed during the 2024 election cycle, when he completed his transformation into a far-right megadonor.
On Oct. 14, WhatsApp co-founder Jan Koum contributed $265,800 to a super PAC that supports Mike Rogers, Republican candidate for Senate in Michigan.
Though it pales in comparison to some of his seven-figure donations, it’s worth noting that angel investor and Ripple co-founder Chris Larsen tossed another $250,000 at a super PAC for Senate Democratic candidates.
LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman gave another $5 million to a super PAC that supports Texas Senate candidate James Talarico.
Airbnb cofounder and U.S. Chief Design Officer Joe Gebbia gave $1 million to a Ken Paxton super PAC.
The Winklevoss twins continue to match each other’s donations, which is adorable. They each gave $125,000 to a super PAC that boosts House Republican candidates.