Welcome back to Puck, where we’re always striving to bring you into the world of the wealthy and well-connected. Did you know that private equity billionaires including David Rubenstein are about to buy the Baltimore Orioles? My new colleague John Ourand just started, and here’s his first scoop—sign up for his new, private email here.

Speaking of which, we’ve got a lot of fresh scoops below the fold… on how Nikki Haley and Donald Trump’s campaigns are wooing Paul Singer and Chuck Schwab; new intel on how much Tim Draper is spending on Haley’s super PAC; and on the types of people that Marc Andreessen was able to pull to the Waldorf Astoria hotel earlier today in Washington.

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The dueling, back-to-back presentations were the highlight of the semiannual meeting of the American Opportunity Alliance, a vigorously low-profile, highly influential network of Wall Street-aligned donors and their handlers, full of cocktail receptions, pitch sessions and, most importantly, poolside gossiping. In an age when so many billionaires are inclined to send their surrogates to do their dirty work, the A.O.A.—as it’s universally known in big-money politics—is one of the few summits to actually merit the time of its bold-faced members. On Monday night, Paul Singer, Ken Griffin, Warren Stephens, and Chuck Schwab had a fireside chat in a private room at a nearby high-end restaurant, I’m told, where they regaled guests with their perspectives on everything from Ukraine to inflation to “wokeness” in higher education. The words “Donald Trump” were barely uttered, if at all, sources tell me.

But the decision to invite Wiles was rather telling. Both mega-donors and the Trump campaign know they can no longer afford to play chicken. The A.O.A. is a diverse group—its members do not move in lockstep like the Koch network does—but it largely funded the anti-Trump barrage late into the 2016 primary and has been somewhat anti-Trump for this entire campaign cycle. Alas, in private conversations, the alliance’s stance has appeared to be softening as it braces for the inevitable. (What are billionaires if not practical?)

Some members, such as the former Trump cabinet appointee Linda McMahon, are vocal Trump sympathizers. And yet at the A.O.A.’s most recent summit, in November in Dallas, the Trump team wasn’t invited at all. Now, this time around, they were sure to send a note down the road for Susie or Chris LaCivita. I know at least a few people involved in the group who aren’t pleased with this newfound coziness. In her presentation, according to a source familiar, Ankeny argued that Trump’s behavior had been unhinged since his win in New Hampshire and that he would be a disaster for G.O.P. candidates for the House and Senate in 2024.

Whichever direction the group swings—warming up to Trump, or waging war à la 2016—will shape this final stretch of the money race between Haley and Trump. Membership in the A.O.A. requires a $65,000 initiation fee or so, and the distribution of a few hundred thousand dollars per cycle to approved organizations. (One presenter, for instance: incumbent senator Bill Hagerty, who talked up the R.N.C.’s reinvigorated vote-by-mail program.) Perhaps more importantly, the group may provide a critical, cultural signal to donors beyond its ranks—helping to determine, for example, whether supporting Trump in 2024 is deemed respectable among the Maidstone crowd.

Griffin, a man who made his fortune with an uncanny ability to discern a good from a bad bet, gushed about Haley’s candidacy but also chased the Kool-Aid with some bitter medicine. “We’re down to two people on the Republican side running for president. I have supported Nikki Haley. I think she is a tremendous candidate,” he said, essentially offering her the endorsement he had teased, but never totally delivered, to Ron DeSantis, (who, based on my reporting last year, seemed to carry false expectations about Griffin’s intentions from the start). But Griffin conceded, eventually, that the path for her was uphill in an ice storm. “It’s a narrower road than it was eight weeks ago. It’s just narrower,” he said, blaming the Democrats for making Trump a martyr and geopolitical events for making him appear strong. “Do we want to return to a president who was just viewed as more powerful, more in charge? And that’s going to be difficult for Nikki to overcome right now.”

He continued: “Her poise: admirable. Her foreign policy experience: tremendous. Her ability to unite this country: phenomenal. I just don’t know though, that, at this moment, that’s going to get her where she needs to get to [in] South Carolina and thereafter.”

Griffin said he “supported” Haley, employing the past tense, which suggested that a donation had already been made. Indeed it had, quietly. Griffin made a $5 million contribution to SFA, a Citadel spokesperson told me—a welcome but fairly modest gift for the guy who spent $50 million on a governor’s race in Illinois last year. And in a sign of where his head is at, that’s only half of what he spent this cycle to boost Senate candidate David McCormick in Pennsylvania. Griffin said he’s focusing down-ballot if it’s Trump vs. Biden, and A.O.A. staff offered a political intelligence briefing on the House and Senate maps at one point at the Four Seasons; Michigan Senate candidate Mike Rogers and Wisconsin’s Eric Hovde scored coveted invites. Indeed, on stage on Monday night in the restaurant’s private room, the name coming up more than Trump or Biden was… McCormick, a fellow hedge fund C.E.O.

The $3 million gift from Draper, part of a lineage of famous Silicon Valley venture capitalists who really built the entire industry, is his largest federal disclosed donation ever. Draper spent $1 million on his quixotic bid to break up California into several smaller states. He pledged up to $20 million at the turn of the century on a bid to expand charter schools across the state, but didn’t end up spending anything close to that.

Anyway, Draper’s comments indicate that he’s given the super PAC $1.75 million more since he cut an initial $1.25 million check to the group last June. The only known donors who have given more to the group are Griffin and Jan Koum, who is in for $10 million to date. “I plan to do everything I can to get her elected. I hope you will too,” he wrote his network this week in a note that was forwarded to me.

Andreessen Horowitz attracted quite a crew to the Waldorf Astoria on Tuesday for a conference focused on the firm’s investment thesis of “American Dynamism,” or the notion that Silicon Valley should invest in patriotic fields like manufacturing and defense tech. According to a copy of the agenda that I saw for the event, which was closed to the media, Ben Horowitz interviewed Maryland governor (and possible 2028 presidential candidate) Wes Moore for a session titled “The Next Generation of Leadership.”

Other items on the agenda that caught my attention included Mark Cuban discussing entrepreneurship with a16z partner David Ulevitch; Jan Smarek, the C.E.O. of California Forever, the Andreessen-backed new city in Solano County, in conversation with Katherine Boyle, Ulevitch’s co-conspirator on American Dynamism work; F.B.I. Director Chris Wray with Ulevitch on the topic of “keeping Americans safe and strengthening the public-private partnership in an age of A.I., innovation, espionage, and major technological advances across any number of fronts”; and two Republican senators, Louisiana’s Bill Cassidy on healthcare, and Indiana’s Todd Young, on “why we need to support A.I. research at all levels—from the classroom to the war room.”

Before attendees repaired to the closing reception at the National Portrait Gallery, Andreessen himself took the stage alongside intellectual polymath and D.C. foodie Tyler Cowen to talk about why “America Needs More Techno-Optimism.” This was actually the second time that he and Cowen had done this buddy-cop routine. Over the weekend, I’m told, Andreessen was a featured speaker at the annual Koch donor summit in Indian Wells, California, where he again shared the stage with Cowen to talk about artificial intelligence. I hear it was a hit.