James Talarico, Alex Bores, and Vivek Ramaswamy Have One Thing in Common: Big Tech's Backing
A roundup of the tech industry's largest political donations to candidates and PACs during the second quarter of 2026.
Embarrassing admission: I enjoy sifting through the Federal Election Commission’s quarterly filings. I have alerts set up to track the receipts and disbursements of specific politicians and their campaigns. I name-search billionaires to see which candidates and political action committees (PACs) they’re financially supporting.
Does this make me a nerd? Yes. Is it a good use of my time? Typically, no. Every once in a while, though, I spot an unusual or newsworthy donation. Which is…a slightly better use of my time.
July 15 was the FEC’s Q2 filing deadline. We’re halfway through the year, and the midterms are only four months away. It’s an ideal moment to take stock of who’s been spending big of late, and who’s keeping their powder dry. I perused thousands of filings today, keeping an eye out for Big Tech and tech-adjacent figures. For OpenAI co-founders Greg Brockman and Sam Altman, it was a quiet quarter. Anthropic’s Dario Amodei, on the other hand, dropped what appears to be his first seven-figure political donations. He wasn’t the only person at Anthropic to aggressively enter the political fray.
Below are some of the most intriguing, and largest, donations from the tech world that were received by campaigns and PACs between April 1 and June 30. The list below is nowhere near exhaustive, and in some cases, the people named have given even more money to the same campaigns or PACs—they just did so in 2025 or the first quarter of 2026. This is a snapshot meant to provide insights into what’s currently animating billionaires and other influential tech figures.
The Q2 Multi-Million-Dollar Donation Club
Reid Hoffman
Who are they? Billionaire venture capitalist, co-founder of LinkedIn, formerly chummy friend of Jeffrey Epstein.
What was their most notable donation? How about $10 million to a super PAC supporting squeaky-clean James Talarico, the Democratic Senate candidate in Texas. Talarico is running against Republican nominee Ken Paxton, whose wife announced she was divorcing him on “biblical grounds” last year. Paxton makes most other scandal-plagued politicians look like Mother Theresa, or at least James Talarico, by comparison.
Miguel “Mike” Bezos
Who are they? Jeff Bezos’s adoptive father. Inspiring: He provided Jeff with a six-figure loan so Jeff could start Amazon.com. Mike is a billionaire now.
What was their most notable donation? Bezos gave $5 million to With Honor Fund II, a nonpartisan super PAC that tries to get veterans elected to Congress.
Michael Bloomberg
Who are they? Billionaire former mayor of New York, center-right kingmaker who frequently parachutes into races to rescue uninspiring centrists who might lose to a progressive or leftist, namesake of the Bloomberg Terminal, short man who will always be known for stop-and-frisk.
What was their most notable donation? At least $6 million to a super PAC backing Democrat Micah Lasher, who recently won a tight (if underwhelming) primary to represent New York’s 12th district in Congress. More on that race below.
Chris Larsen
Who are they? Billionaire angel investor, crypto pioneer (take that however you wish), Gavin Newsom superfan, proponent of San Francisco being a surveillance state.
What was their most notable donation? At least $3.5 million towards You Can Push Back, a super PAC for Alex Bores, who was Lasher’s toughest competition in NY-12 (and relatively pro-AI regulation). For those of you keep track at home: Bloomberg 1, Larsen 0.
Larsen also gave $500,000 to Talarico’s super PAC.
Saikat Chakrabarti
Who are they? Unsuccessfully ran for Congress to replace Nancy Pelosi as San Francisco’s representative. (Chakrabarti finished a distant third behind Connie Chan and Scott Wiener.) Former AOC chief of staff who could not secure her endorsement during his primary run. Has a lot of money from his time as a software engineer and Silicon Valley investor.
What was their most notable donation? $1.5 million to the Justice Democrats PAC. Also converted his campaign committee into a super PAC for Chan, who is more left-leaning than Wiener. (Chan and Wiener are competing against each other in the general election.)
Vivek Ramaswamy Fan Club
For those who are unaware: Failed 2024 presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy is running for governor of Ohio. Normally, the GOP candidate would be a heavy favorite to win this race, even during midterms that will favor the Democrats. But Ramaswamy is in a closer-than-expected battle against Democratic candidate Amy Acton for two reasons:
He’s bad at politics and campaigning.
A not-insignificant portion of his base is racist and doesn’t want to vote for him.
Two conservative billionaires to the rescue!
Ratmir Timashev
Who are they? Billionaire founder of Veeam, a data management company. He recently told Forbes he wants to make Columbus, Ohio, “the next Silicon Valley—America’s innovation hub.” Yes, he attended Ohio State.
What was their most notable donation? $5 million to a super PAC supporting Ramaswamy’s gubernatorial campaign.
Elon Musk
Who are they? Le epic wealthiest man alive who’s gonna get us to Mars any decade now.
What was their most notable donation? $5 million to the same Ramaswamy super PAC. Quite a turn of events: In early 2025, Musk reportedly booted Ramaswamy from co-leading DOGE because they didn’t get along.
Big Republican Party Donors
Jan Koum
Who are they? Right-wing billionaire co-founder of WhatsApp.
What was their most notable donation? $1 million for MAGA Inc.
Bijan Tehrani
Who are they? Co-founder of two cursed platforms: Stake and Kick. Stake is a casino that runs on crypto. Kick is a streaming service where some of the world’s most self-absorbed Zoomers harass people on camera and/or record themselves gambling on Stake.
What was their most notable donation? Wouldn’t you know it, he gave $1 million to the MAGA Inc. super PAC.
Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss
Who are they? Billionaire crypto bros, literal identical bros, tertiary characters in Mark Zuckerberg’s come-up story.
What was their most notable donation? At least $750,000 each to the National Republican Senatorial Committee. It’s cute that they gave the same amount on the same day.
Anthony Wood
Who are they? Founder and CEO of Roku. He’s the reason you have a TV remote that never totally works properly.
What was their most notable donation? $500,000 to the Texans for a Conservative Majority super PAC.
Big Democratic Party Donors
Ron Conway
Who are they? An angel investor and the “Godfather of Silicon Valley.”
What was their most notable donation? $250,000 to the Senate Majority PAC, which supports Democrats in the U.S. Senate.
Irwin M. Jacobs
Who are they? Co-founder of the chipmaker Qualcomm. And 92 years old!
What was their most notable donation? $300,000 to Serving CA, a super PAC that tried to uplift Ammar Campa-Najjar, a progressive who ran in California’s 48th congressional district. Campa-Najjar finished third in the primary.
Michael Novogratz
Who are they? Billionaire tech investor and founder of Galaxy, yet another crypto company.
What was their most notable donation? $500,000 to Next Generation Action, a new-ish PAC that seems to have a center-left bent.
Patty Quillin
Who are they? A philanthropist for left-leaning causes and wife of Reid Hoffman.
What was their most notable donation? $500,000 to the Working Families Party PAC. It’s interesting timing—the WFP has been getting its lunch eaten by the DSA in recent congressional races that have pivoted progressives against democratic socialists.
Anthropic Gets (More) Political
I spotted a six-figure super PAC donation from a Google DeepMind engineer, and a six-figure donation from an OpenAI researcher, but neither AI company produced as many large donations during Q2 as Anthropic.
Dario Amodei
Who are they? CEO and founder of Anthropic. Purportedly concerned citizen about artificial intelligence while also running America’s most successful artificial intelligence startup.
What was their most notable donation? $1 million to Public First, a super PAC that claims to advocate for AI safeguards and candidates who are pro-AI regulation. Amodei’s check likely made its way to another PAC that unsuccessfully tried to bolster Alex Bores’s congressional run in NY-12.
Peter Lofgren
Who are they? A research engineer at Anthropic.
What was their most notable donation? Normally I’d avoid including someone who isn’t an obvious public figure, but Lofgren donated $999,900 to Public First. Lotta money.
Shauna Kravec
Who are they? A research engineer at Anthropic.
What was their most notable donation? A cool $500,000 to Public First. Same reasoning as above for Kravec’s inclusion here.
Nicholas Joseph
Who are they? Technical staff at Anthropic
What was their most notable donation? $250,000 for Public First.
Jan Leike
Who are they? AI research at Anthropic.
What was their most notable donation? $400,000 to Public First.
Daniel Ziegler
Who are they? AI safety research at Anthropic.
What was their most notable donation? $500,000 to Dream NYC, another (unsuccessful) super PAC for Bores.
Here’s what else we’re reading this week:
This week alone, I have read stories about how Kalshi:
Partnered with OpenAI to subtly show World Cup odds in ChatGPT
Wants to offer “contracts” (my scare quotes, because this is all gambling no matter how much Kalshi polishes its turds) for predicting what percentage of flights will be cancelled at an airport during a specific period of time.
Is now accepting bets on drug trials—whether they succeed and whether they’re granted regulatory approvals.
Had to alert federal regulators to irregular bets placed by President Trump’s teleprompter operator, who allegedly used his advanced knowledge of what the president was about to say in order to pocket more than $100,000, according to an ABC News report.
New York just became the first state to institute a moratorium on new data centers for up to a year. Meanwhile, in Wyoming, relatives of U.S. Sen. Cynthia Lummis reportedly struck a deal to sell thousands of acres of land to Microsoft so the Big Tech company can construct a data center. Lummis happens to be one of the staunchest Big Tech allies in Congress.
I am not in the business of making predictions about Mr. Market—my assumption was/is that SpaceX stock will inexplicably balloon just like Tesla’s stock—but so far, Elon Musk’s second major IPO isn’t going very well. SpaceX stock dipped below its initial $135 IPO on Wednesday.
On Bluesky, I started a thread about a lawsuit filed by 26 Meta workers. They allege that after taking or requesting medical leave, they were included in mass layoffs at the company because of internal AI systems that track “productivity and output metrics” and “AI-token consumption.” Meta has denied the allegations in the lawsuit. I’ll be keeping an eye on this one.