(Bloomberg) — Donald Trump raised millions of dollars from tech industry leaders at a campaign event in San Francisco hosted by investor David Sacks, who spoke of growing interest from Silicon Valley for the candidacy of the former president.
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Wealthy donors converged Thursday at Sacks’ San Francisco home, where the presumptive Republican nominee spoke to attendees for about an hour on topics ranging from cryptocurrency to artificial intelligence to counterfeit prevention deep.
The sold-out dinner raised $12 million for Trump’s re-election efforts, Harmeet Dhillon, a Republican National Committee member who attended the fundraiser, told the social media site He did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the money raised.
“It was a mob that wrote big checks,” said Dhillon, a lawyer who counts Trump among his clients. Many crypto founders were in the room, she said, as well as donors who had supported other Republican or Democratic candidates in the past. “It was very encouraging.”
Sacks co-hosted the event at Broadcliff, his home in the Pacific Heights neighborhood, with investor Chamath Palihapitiya.
With tickets starting at $50,000 for a reception and photo and $300,000 for dinner, the event attracted keen interest in Silicon Valley, particularly because it followed Trump’s conviction to New York for 34 counts of falsifying records.
On Thursday evening, several blocks of the upscale Pacific Heights neighborhood were blocked off by barricades for the event. Puzzled passersby stopped to stare at the crowd of flag-waving pro-Trump protesters.
The verdict was followed by a wave of support for Trump in some corners of the tech world, including from Doug Leone, a former executive at the prestigious venture capital firm Sequoia Capital, and Shaun Maguire, a partner at Sequoia who said last week he was donating $300,000 to Trump’s re-election. Other donors included Jacob Helberg, senior adviser to the CEO of Palantir Technologies Inc., who also planned to attend the fundraiser, according to a person familiar with the matter who asked not to be identified discussing private information .
The crowd included tech industry figures such as crypto entrepreneurs and investors Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, Dhillon said, the twins most famous for claiming to have had the original idea for Facebook. Trump suggested they had been deprived of fair income.
Trump has enjoyed unusually vocal support from the tech industry this election cycle — a contrast with 2016, when billionaire Peter Thiel was one of his only visible supporters. (Thiel said he plans to sit out this cycle.) In addition to dining with Sacks and Palihapitiya this week, Trump will travel to Southern California, where he is expected to attend another fundraiser Saturday hosted by Palmer Luckey, the co-founder of Anduril Industries Inc., a technology company that…
