WASHINGTON — Silicon Valley’s wealthiest tech executives have lost hundreds of millions of dollars in campaign spending after their massive financial gamble on Republican candidates ended in historic defeat during the US midterm elections.
According to a report published by the Financial Times on Thursday, American voters decisively rejected the growing political influence of Big Tech, handing the Democratic Party a “monolithic” victory that ended Republican control of both chambers of Congress.
“Tech executives spent hundreds of millions of dollars, but their efforts proved to be nothing more than a paper tiger. Americans rejected their corruptive influence and any candidate associated with them,” Sacha Haworth, head of the Tech Oversight Project, told the British newspaper. A political source who coordinated campaign spending for major tech figures confirmed the failure, stating bluntly that “the money didn’t work.”
Among the biggest losers were SpaceX and X CEO Elon Musk, who poured more than $470 million into GOP campaigns. Nearly half of that sum was directed toward Texas Republican Ken Paxton, who ultimately lost his high-profile race to Democrat James Talarico.
Other notable Republican donors included Andreessen-Horowitz co-founders Mark Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, who contributed over $90 million, and Gemini cryptocurrency founders Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, who donated more than $5 million. OpenAI co-founder Greg Brockman and his wife donated $50 million, splitting the funds between the pro-Trump MAGA Inc. super PAC and Leading the Future, a pro-AI political action committee.
Despite Musk’s last-minute appeals on social media to “vote red,” the massive financial injections failed to sway an electorate deeply concerned with domestic and foreign policy crises.
According to an NBC exit poll cited in the report, a majority of US voters cited the proliferation of AI data centres as a crucial or major factor in determining their vote. Furthermore, widespread voter anger over inflation and the ongoing US-Israeli war against Iran severely undermined Republican candidates.
The geopolitical fallout from the conflict—launched by a US-Israeli military coalition on February 28—proved particularly damaging to the incumbent administration. On Wednesday, US Vice President JD Vance conceded that the war played a pivotal role in the party’s crushing midterm defeat.
“The reason we lost is the war. The president himself said so last night,” Vance wrote on X, confirming President Donald Trump’s own assessment of the electoral disaster.
The midterm results dealt a staggering political blow to President Trump and the Republican establishment, with several traditionally deep-red states switching allegiance. The Democratic sweep of traditional GOP strongholds, most notably Texas and Arkansas, signals a dramatic realignment in American politics, proving that Silicon Valley’s financial might could not outweigh the electorate’s rejection of their agenda.
Reference: PressTv