SAN FRANCISCO – Prominent venture capitalists and startup founders see Donald Trump’s victory as heralding a golden age for innovation, anticipating a big boost for tech companies from lucrative government contracts and a rollback of regulations they see as burdensome.
The potentially unbridled future of the tech industry under the second Trump administration galvanized some Republican donors at a conference in Las Vegas this week hosted by the Rockbridge Network, a conservative political advocacy group co-founded by Trump’s vice president and former venture capitalist JD Vance. a person familiar with the meeting.
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These discussions took place behind closed doors, but some tech investors, founders and executives are celebrating publicly.
“The regulatory cuts will be profound,” Cathie Wood, the CEO of investment firm Ark Invest, a major shareholder in Elon Musk’s electric car company Tesla, said in a YouTube video on Saturday. She predicted “explosive GDP growth” and said Trump’s cryptocurrency-friendly policies would unleash a wave of internet innovation.
The Rockbridge meeting in Las Vegas this week was attended by prominent venture investor and Trump supporter Marc Andreessen, as well as Trump’s pick of White House chief of staff, Susie Wiles. Tech industry insiders were upbeat, according to the person familiar with the meeting, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to share private conversations.
“These people are just so excited by the fact that they can do a lot of things and move a lot faster — especially in the areas of AI and energy,” the person said.
Trump is considering pro-crypto figures for major financial institutions and has said he will repeal new rules on AI set by President Joe Biden. Such changes will give startups and investors an open playing field where they can “geek out and develop our business,” the person said.
Silicon Valley’s most influential startup incubator, Y Combinator, on Monday encouraged company founders to pitch “notoriously tough” ideas, listing areas of business that rely largely on collaboration or support from government or regulators. This includes selling software to federal agencies and law enforcement, developing financial technology products for regulated industries such as insurance or investment banking, and bringing manufacturing back to the United States.
“Everything is on the table!” said one of the company’s partners in a YouTube video.
The widespread optimism suggests that many in Silicon Valley are confident that the changes implemented under the Trump administration will benefit venture capital-backed tech startups — despite the president-elect’s unclear tech policies and populist rhetoric.
The tech industry’s hopes for Trump’s return to the White House are coalescing around the slogan: “It’s time to build.”
The phrase was first popularized in 2020 by Andreessen, whose venture firm Andreessen Horowitz backed Musk’s bid to buy Twitter. He was one of the most prominent technology leaders to support Trump after the failed assassination attempt on the Republican candidate in July.
Andreessen initially adopted his motto to describe the need for ambitious investments in infrastructure and science during the coronavirus pandemic. He and others in the tech industry are now suggesting that the radical government that Trump and his close adviser Musk have promised will allow the tech industry to realize that vision.
“I think the winners will be … a lot of these new startups that are emerging,” Palmer Luckey, the founder of defense technology company Anduril Industries and a longtime Trump supporter, said on Bloomberg Television last week.
Luckey said he is in contact with members of Trump’s transition team and believes the president-elect is eager to make defense spending more efficient, which would benefit startup entrepreneurs more than established contractors.
On Tuesday evening, Trump announced that Musk, who donated at least $118 million to support his campaign, and former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy would lead a vaguely defined body called the Department of Government Efficiency. Despite that name, it would be established outside the government.
The group would work with the White House and the Office of Management and Budget to bring about “drastic changes,” according to a Trump statement, which would include cuts to regulations, government spending and federal payrolls. His aides are exploring strategies to implement its recommendations, with or without congressional approval.
The U.S. government has adopted relatively little technology regulation over the past decade. Technology leaders have nevertheless pushed back on stepping up antitrust enforcement and on proposals to regulate AI.
Federal investigations and lawsuits have alleged anticompetitive behavior or challenged mergers of technology companies including Amazon, Apple and Google. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post.
While there were major acquisitions during Biden’s term, tech executives have mainly complained about Federal Trade Commission head Lina Khan’s oversight of their sector, which has held up some deals.
Selling startups to Big Tech companies is an important way for venture capitalists to get a return on their investments.
“She will be fired soon,” Musk said in a post on X, referring to Khan the week before the election.
Despite the excitement among some tech leaders, others in Silicon Valley are concerned.
The majority of voters in the San Francisco Bay Area, one of the most Democratic areas in a reliably blue state, voted for Vice President Kamala Harris. Trump and his supporters’ views on immigration and diversity sparked an outcry from some technology workers and executives, many of whom are immigrants, during his first term. Industry workers have become more cautious in response to Trump’s latest victory.
Some of the loudest enthusiasm for Trump in Silicon Valley comes from a small but increasingly influential segment of the industry focused on “hard tech.”
The term generally refers to areas such as self-driving cars, satellites and military technology that require both physical and digital innovation. That ethos is celebrated at events such as the Reindustrialize Summit in Detroit in July, aimed at improving ties between the technology, manufacturing, military and financial sectors.
Progress on hard-tech projects may require long-term funding, such as that provided by government grants or contracts, and obtaining approval from federal regulators.
Musk’s SpaceX has received huge government contracts by beating out older competitors, providing a blueprint that many hard-tech entrepreneurs are trying to follow in areas like military technology or border security technology — both of which were listed as government investment priorities in the Republican Party’s 2024 platform.
Leaders of military technology startups often complain that government regulations on defense procurement are too complex, hurting their companies. Restrictions initially intended to prevent corruption have become “illogical and wild,” Ben Horowitz, Andreessen’s investment partner, said on a podcast the firm released Tuesday about the tech investment landscape following Trump’s victory.
The defense technology sector relies on its products to be incorporated into US military strategies, such as countering China’s growing power in the Pacific with air and sea drones. Trump has spoken skeptically about defense pacts with allies that he says benefit the United States, but he singled out China hawks this week as picks for foreign policy roles likely to favor continued military spending.
Luckey, co-founder of Anduril, said last week that he expected the procurement strategy to become more favorable to defense startups like his. “We did well under Trump in his first administration, and we did even better under Biden and his administration,” he told Bloomberg. “I think we will do even better now.”
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