How a network of tech billionaires funded the sudden rise of JD Vance
Vance spent less than five years in Silicon Valley’s tech industry, but the connections he made with Peter Thiel and others became crucial to his political ascent
LAST month, JD Vance flew to San Francisco to hold a fundraiser for Donald Trump and to host a private dinner afterward with two dozen tech and crypto executives and investors. The location was the opulent Pacific Heights mansion of David Sacks, an entrepreneur and podcaster whom Vance had met through tech investor Peter Thiel. Vance, now 39, had worked for one of Thiel’s investment firms in San Francisco in 2016.
During the US$300,000-a-person dinner that night, Trump, seated between Sacks and another tech investor, Chamath Palihapitiya, informally polled the room about whom to choose as his running mate. Even with another vice-presidential hopeful, Governor Doug Burgum of North Dakota, in attendance, Sacks, Palihapitiya and others all had the same answer: Pick Vance, they told Trump, according to two people with knowledge of the exchange.
Vance, the Ohio senator selected by Trump this week to be his running mate, spent less than five years in Silicon Valley’s tech industry, where he worked as a junior venture capitalist and a biotech executive. But while he made little mark on the tech scene, it was a formative period that has powered Vance’s stunning ascent in the Republican Party – and is likely to influence his political future.
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