It wasn’t very long ago—spring of last year—that Elon Musk pledged to cut down on his political spending and then more or less accused President Trump of being a pedophile. But time heals all wounds, especially when you have to bail out Ken Paxton, a lackluster Senate candidate in Texas who’s been unable to shake unsavory accusations that he gave an “Epstein-style sweetheart deal” to a convicted child sex offender (and also allegedly ignored actual victims of Jeffrey Epstein).
Since July, Musk has given at least $276 million to boost Republicans’ midterms odds. A significant chunk of those donations have been funneled to a super political action committee (PAC) that’s supportive of Paxton. One could argue Musk is attempting to rig the Texas Senate race. Not me, though. I think it’s awesome that with the snap of a finger, an on-again, off-again trillionaire can ensure that a Paxton super PAC raises almost triple the quarterly funds of James Talarico’s campaign committee and main super PAC combined.
Musk’s oligarchical output is the biggest takeaway from this most recent Federal Election Committee (FEC) quarterly filing deadline. Proportionately, he is unmatched. Sometimes, though, the same super PAC filings reveal donations that fill in important blanks and tell their own compelling story.
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei has created headaches for his AI company by butting heads with the Trump Administration and the Pentagon. (My take, as I’ve written about at length, is that Amodei is correct to invoke use-of-force red lines for his AI tools, but he does not go nearly far enough, and in fact has agitated for an even more hawkish stance against China, the world’s other superpower.)
To compensate for Amodei’s annoyingly squishy liberal vibes, Anthropic has resorted to back-channeling with the White House via Tom Brown, another company co-founder. Brown has reportedly quelled Anthropic’s testy relationship with both the White House and Musk. When Trump recently hosted a bunch of tech oligarchs so they could agree on one big beautiful AI safety pinky promise, Brown was in attendance. Amodei, too! Trump even said he likes Amodei now.
What’s Brown’s secret sauce? He’s tall—six-foot-six—and Trump is on the record liking tall and beefy men. But according to a new Wall Street Journal profile, the real key to Brown’s schmoozing is that he’s a Republican. “Brown bought a house in Washington earlier this year with his wife, a startup co-founder and former venture investor named Michelle Valentine,” the Wall Street Journal reported. “The couple has said in private conversations that they are allies of the Republican party and want to establish relationships in Washington, people familiar with the matter said.”
The phrase “allies of the Republican party” got my attention. It’s an endorsement, but a lukewarm one. (Another sentence in the profile refers to Brown as a Republican, though it’s not attributed to anyone.) I figured now—just after the third-quarter FEC filings deadline—was the perfect time to look into Brown’s history of political donations. What I found is less GOP stalwart, more tech billionaire who’s making a conveniently timed rebrand.
A brief PACs primer before I go any further: A campaign’s principal committee can accept a “maximum” donation from an individual of $3,500 for a primary, then $3,500 for a general election. Super PACs can raise unlimited funds, but are not supposed to coordinate directly with any candidates—a farcical and easily exploitable system. There are joint-fundraising committees that have higher donation limits than a campaign committee. There are also dark-money groups that don’t report their donors, just their aggregate donation amounts, because they are registered as nonprofits. The FEC barely investigates anything anymore because it has four vacant seats out of six possible commissioners.
In 2016, Brown listed his profession as “not employed.” He was nowhere near his current estimated net worth of $15.5 billion. Guess who received $35 of his hard-earned money? That would be Sen. Bernie Sanders. So…probably not a Republican a decade ago. Fair enough. Many such cases among the tech elite. According to FEC filings, Brown didn’t log another donation to a federal candidate until 2021. This time, he donated $250 to a longshot congressional candidate in Virginia named Victoria Virasingh. She previously worked at Palantir, so I’m not going to declare her part of the Sanders faction of the left. She did, however, run as a Democrat who said she wanted to model her politics after Squad member Rep. Ayanna Pressley.
In 2022, Brown gave $2,900 (the maximum allowed during that election cycle) to Carrick Flynn, a congressional candidate in Oregon who garnered the support of ultra-wealthy figures in the effective altruist community. Again: not exactly a leftist, and Flynn certainly didn’t have a left-leaning base of support. But he did run as a Democrat! For those keeping track at home: three political donations for Brown, none to Republicans. (To confirm Brown’s identity, I cross-referenced the address he listed in 2016 with the address he listed on later forms, when his employer was Anthropic.)
In April of this year, Brown’s wife Michelle Valentine—a Bay Area entrepreneur—started donating to Republicans. I couldn’t find any previous donations that she sent to federal candidates. If you’ll recall, April was smack-dab in the middle of Anthropic’s Cold War with the Trump Administration. In late February, the Pentagon announced it was designating Anthropic as a supply-chain risk. In March, Anthropic sued the Pentagon over that designation. In mid-April, Amodei met with senior White House officials. “The company appears to be inching back into the White House’s good graces,” CNBC reported afterwards.
That same month, Valentine logged more than a half-dozen “maximum” donations to House and Senate Republicans. In May, Valentine gave $5,000 to the hilariously named Making a Responsible Stand for Households in America (MARSHA) PAC; it dispenses funds to allies of the far-right Sen. Marsha Blackburn, who’s running for governor of Tennessee. I also spotted donations to Louisiana Sen. John Kennedy and Alabama Sen. Katie Britt, among others. More recently, Valentine cut a check for $157,900 to a joint fundraising committee for Senate Republicans.
And wouldn’t you know it? Brown is now entering the fray as a Republican donor. In July and August, Brown maxed out donations to Rep. Mike Rogers (who’s running for Senate in Michigan against Abdul El-Sayed), followed by Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (who believes the 2020 election was stolen and that there should be a Charlie Kirk statue in the U.S. Capitol). On the last day of the most recent quarterly filing period, the Senate Leadership Fund—a Republican super PAC—marked down a $250,000 donation from Brown. He also appears to have given $75,000 to the joint fundraising committee of Mississippi Sen. Roger Wicker, who’s the chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee.
Taken in totality: After years of rarely giving to federal candidates, Brown and Valentine have donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to Republicans and conservative causes during the latter half of 2026. I expect they’ll eclipse seven figures in donations by Nov. 3.
It’s possible Brown was always right-wing, despite his prior, sporadic donations to Democrats. I doubt it, though. It’s more plausible that Brown was radicalized over the last few years, same as countless other tech billionaires who want to take advantage of MAGA’s distaste for regulation and whatever is considered woke at the moment.
I’m not discounting a third possibility: that Brown has drifted right, sure, but he and his wife also see a golden opportunity to suck up to MAGA. After all, Brown’s billionaire net worth is dependent on Anthropic’s (likely) impending IPO. It’s in his best interest for the Trump Administration and a Republican-led Congress to be Anthropic’s allies, not their enemies. One surefire way to do so is to drop some well-timed donations that are meaningful enough to get on Republicans’ good side, but not huge enough to garner wall-to-wall coverage a la Elon Musk.
Here are other donations from the tech industry that caught my attention:
Marc Andreessen maxed out donations to a bunch of Republican Senate candidates, including Rep. Julia Letlow, who’s running for office in Louisiana to replace outgoing Sen. Bill Cassidy; Sen. Darline Graham Nordone, who’s trying to hold onto her deceased brother Lindsey’s seat in South Carolina; Rep. Ashley Hinson, who’s running to replace retiring Sen. Joni Ernst in Iowa; Alaska’s incumbent Sen. Dan Sullivan, who’s in a tight race against Mary Peltola; West Virginia Sen. Shelley Moore Capito; and Ohio Sen. Jon Husted, who’s a narrow underdog against Democratic opponent (and former Senator) Sherrod Brown.
Andreessen’s business partner Ben Horowitz also donated to South Carolina Sen. Graham Nordone, Alaska Sen. Sullivan, West Virginia Sen. Capito, Ohio Sen. Husted, Iowa Rep. Hinson. And he sprinkled some cash to the DCCC ($22,150) as well as to Rep. Seth Moulton, an unsuccessful Senate candidate in Massachusetts.
Anduril CEO Palmer Luckey gave $36,900 to a GOP joint fundraising committee, an amount exceeded by his wife (she gave $61,800 this quarter).
Reid Hoffman, the billionaire LinkedIn founder and acquaintance of Jeffrey Epstein, gave $5 million to the Senate Majority PAC, a super PAC for Democratic Senate candidates. He tacked on $2.5 million for a handful of other super PACs backing left-of-center causes and candidates.
Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz made his biggest public donations since the 2024 election: $4 million to the Senate Majority super PAC, and $4 million to the Future Forward super PAC (another bottomless well for Democratic Party megadonors). Moskovitz’s wife, Cari Tuna, matched his donations.
Netflix co-founder Reed Hastings dispersed $1 million to the Democratic Senate Majority super PAC, $1 million for the James Talarico’s main super PAC, and $300,000 to a Hakeem Jeffries joint fundraising committee.
Palantir CEO Alex Karp donated a combined $515,000 to two super PACs that support conservative war hawks.
Angel investor Chris Larsen contributed $2 million to the Democratic Senate Majority super PAC.
Airbnb co-founder Joe Gebbia, who also holds the made-up sounding (but real) title of U.S. Chief Design Officer, ponied up $1 million for a MAHA super PAC.
Steve Ballmer is still in hiding after his Los Angeles Clippers were severely punished by the NBA for salary cap circumvention violations. Connie Ballmer (Steve’s wife) gave $3 million to a gun control PAC.
The Winklevoss twins combined to contribute millions of dollars to the MAGA Inc. super PAC. I am having trouble tallying the exact figure because, no joke, it appears they made the contributions via Bitcoin? Didn’t know you could do that. Very on-brand for those fellas.