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How did the Democrats lose Silicon Valley? Or did they?

If you read the headlines this week about Elon Musk, David Sacks, Marc Andreessen and other influential figures in technology moving to support former President Trump’s re-election, it appeared a sea change had taken place in Silicon Valley, long considered a Democrat hotbed.

The loudest donors in Silicon Valley are promoting Trump at a time when the tech world as a whole is ascending in Washington, with billionaires using their ballooning wealth and media foothold to exert influence. Their voices are made all the more prominent amid the conspicuous neutrality of Big Tech leaders like the Google C.E.O. Sundar Pichai and the Meta chief Mark Zuckerberg, who are possibly afraid of invoking Trump’s ire and employee backlash.

It wasn’t always this way. But big technology’s relationship with government, once symbiotic, attracted new scrutiny from Silicon Valley’s libertarian masses after social media companies tamped down on misinformation, drawing accusations that they were ceding to an overstepping government.

For some, the infractions were more personal. Musk was brushed off by President Biden over his anti-union stance and excluded from an electric vehicle event at the White House in 2021. Now Musk, who has voted for Democrats in the past and has said he created Tesla to help one of Biden’s biggest ambitions, preventing climate change, has become among the party’s biggest detractors.

Then there are issues in California, like rising taxes and a crime wave in San Francisco; the anti-woke movement; and regulatory battles over antitrust, crypto, and artificial intelligence that have high stakes in Silicon Valley.

The question now is whether Silicon Valley’s Trump boosters are heralding a larger shift in the tech world, or if they’re merely demonstrating that their voices are more powerful in politics than ever.

Silicon Valley’s iconoclastic views run deep. Peter Thiel and David Sacks, two of Trump’s biggest supporters in tech, co-authored “The Diversity Myth” in 1995, arguing against “the extreme focus on racism.” At the time it was a fringe view in politics, and tech was a relatively small industry.

But the Republican Party now reflects some of the tech industry’s long-held libertarian views, making fighting “woke equity” a pillar of its politics, while Democrats, including Gov. Gavin Newsom of California, have pushed for laws promoting diversity.

At the same time, tech’s influence in politics has skyrocketed. While Thiel’s $1.6 million check to Trump drew headlines in 2016, it looks like chump change compared to Musk’s recently reported pledge to donate $45 million a month to a pro-Trump super PAC. Venture capitalists have built up huge followings on podcasts, newsletters and on X, which is owned by Musk.

Tech is tired of being cast as the villain. As founders became billionaires, the industry became, in its view, a punching bag for regulators. Senator Elizabeth Warren has led a charge against cryptocurrency. Biden’s top antitrust enforcers — Lina Kahn of the Federal Trade Commission and Jonathan Kanter at the Department of Justice — have zeroed in on tech acquisitions, limiting venture capital firms’ ability to sell a company.

But at the Republican National Convention this week, Wall Street, not technology, was the target of choice.

Jason Calacanis, who hosts a popular podcast with fellow Trump supporters and start-up investors Chamath Palihapitiya, Sacks and David Friedberg, wrote in a post on X during the convention: “The truth is, the left has dug into an anti-entrepreneur and anti-tech position for over a decade, while the GOP has positioned Trump 2.0 to be pro-innovation and pro-founder.”

Crypto is chief on the agenda. The crypto industry has already spent millions attacking Representative Katie Porter of California, a crypto critic, and in tight elections in Ohio and Montana. It’s expected to spend millions more on the presidential race. Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, whose venture capital firm has bet big on crypto, told employees this week the Biden administration has “basically subverted rule of law to attack crypto industry,” as they disclosed plans to put their money behind Trump. (The venture capitalist Mark Cuban has speculated investors might see a further benefit in supporting Trump’s likely inflationary agenda.)

“Their mortal enemy is Gary Gensler at the S.E.C.,” said Boris Feldman, the head of the technology, media and telecom practice at the law firm Freshfields, referring to the chair of the securities regulator. “If you’re a billionaire, what is it to you to give $100 million if you think that will save your business?”

They don’t see risk in publicly backing Trump. While Biden has spoken harshly about “corporate greed,” Trump has a history of lashing out at specific companies. Many of Trump’s loudest supporters in tech, including Musk, endorsed him after he survived an assassination attempt at a campaign rally, which seemed an immediate boon for his campaign.

“If they have taken such a large, huge public stance against Biden at this point, they obviously think one of two things is true, maybe both,” Julie Samuels, chief executive of TechNYC, a nonprofit industry group, told DealBook. “One, there’s literally no chance he can win. Or number two, even if he wins, it can’t get any worse for them than it is right now.”

The bigger picture of Silicon Valley looks less red. The vast majority of tech companies’ rank and file, as well as power brokers, still vote Democrat. A poll by The Information, a technology focused publication, found a majority of its readers plan to vote for Biden. Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn’s co-founder, is one of Biden’s most influential supporters. Mark Pincus, the former C.E.O. of Zynga, said this week he originally supported Biden in this election because he “thought that a second Trump presidency is risky.” He noted, among other things, Trump “has been oddly positive about dictators like Vladimir Putin.” (Pincus, who bemoaned the Democrats’ progressive policies, also urged Biden to move aside for another Democratic candidate.)

Vinod Khosla, founder of Khosla Ventures who hosted a fundraiser for Biden in May, told DealBook that he thinks the perception of Silicon Valley’s politics has been skewed by a handful of people whose calculus is: “‘anyone supporting crypto,’ ‘less regulation makes me more money,’ and ‘Trump opinions can be bought.’”

“VC’s who have a large megaphone should not be confused as representing all of Silicon Valley,” Khosla said. — Lauren Hirsch