Marissa Mayer’s Return, The ‘All-In’ Fundraiser & Melinda’s Moves

Welcome back to The Stratosphere, your weekly dive into the world of big money in Silicon Valley. (Still getting this email forwarded to you? Up your game by subscribing here.) 🎧 Programming note: For more on the intersection of tech and politics, catch me on the latest episode of Tara Palmeri’s wildly entertaining podcast, Somebody’s Gotta Win. We discuss the icy relationship between Nikki Haley and Donald Trump, the viability of them sharing a 2024 ticket, the red-pilling of TikTok, and the big news about Melinda French Gates’s multibillion-dollar exit from the Gates Foundation. Speaking of which…

Sacksfest ’24 & Melinda’s Split Decision

The latest details on Silicon Valley’s Trump fundraiser, the return of Palmer Luckey, and Marissa Mayer’s guest list. Plus: Gates insiders on why Melinda left the Foundation.

TEDDY SCHLEIFER

The once-unthinkable Trump campaign fundraiser in San Francisco now has a date. On June 6, the investor and inveterate podcaster David Sacks will open Broadcliff, his palatial Pacific Heights home on the neighborhood’s iconic street, to the ex-president, along with a smattering of tech leaders, plenty of whom have become decidedly more Trump-friendly since Biden (or President Lina Khan, in their view) took office.The Trump event is a valedictory moment for Sacks—now the leader nonpareil of the growing right-wing presence in Silicon Valley politics, just as Reid Hoffman leads the political action on the left. It marks an epochal shift in tech, too. Until somewhat recently, America First conservatives were essentially an underground society within the industry. But the last three years have been defined by backlash to perceived progressive overreach, and even a touch of Trump nostalgia. Not surprisingly, the Sacks fundraiser is generating a ton of interest from techies, and not just in the Bay Area: Republican bundlers from across the country are struggling to get their hands on tickets, I hear. And outsiders will be closely scrutinizing the guest list to divine the new hierarchy of G.O.P. tech power brokers. Can Sacks get Elon Musk to show up, as he has for his past events? What about Peter Thiel or Marc Andreessen? The event is being cast by Sacks and his allies as a possible show of force. Expect to see strong turnout from the crypto world in particular, now that Trump is pitching the Gensler-haters, hard. One confirmed member of the host committee is, of course, Chamath Palihapitiya, Sacks’ All-In podcast bestie. That’s not surprising, either, given his own rightward drift during the Biden years. But Chamath’s involvement has nevertheless alarmed some Democrats, since he recently took the C.E.O. job at Hustle, a progressive text messaging platform that was, until recently anyway, widely used by Democratic organizations—including the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. A source plugged into these conversations says this has produced some anxiety among progressive tech operatives and Democratic groups as Chamath goes deeper into G.O.P. politics. “It’s extremely unusual for the C.E.O. of a major Democratic tech company to actively support the Republican nominee for president, to say the least,” said the source. In any case, because Sacks and Chamath are big donors cosplaying as media personalities (or maybe the other way around?), the June 6 confab should be anything but a run-of-the-mill, canapé-and-poached-salmon dinner. At the very least, the wine will be better than average—Chamath is a fanatic oenophile. And I also wouldn’t be surprised if Sacks and Chamath actually interview Trump during the evening… a live taping of the All-In pod, perhaps? Sure, it might sound ridiculous to turn a high-dollar fundraiser into a content opportunity, but hey, this is 2024. And Sacks knows content. I hear that the PayPal Mafia member is writing a book about high-growth startups, another way for him to evangelize to his audience. It will technically be his second foray as an author, although he’s dismissed the most puerile parts of the book he co-wrote with his pal and Stanford classmate Peter Thiel, The Diversity Myth: Multiculturalism and Political Intolerance on Campus, as “college journalism written over 20 years ago.” He’s also been shopping a movie about the early PayPal years.

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More Trump Ragers

There are two other upcoming Trump events scheduled in California—one an anonymously hosted function in Beverly Hills (no names on the invite? C’mon!) on June 7, and the other hosted by Palmer Luckey, the oh-so-charming former Facebook V.R. executive who is enjoying his moment as the founder of Anduril, a defense contractor that specializes in A.I.-powered weapons. Luckey, who’s sister is married to Matt Gaetz, will host Trump on June 8 at his home in Newport Beach, according to the invite.Of course, the Trump fundraising social calendar is dependent, in part, on his legal schedule: It’s even possible that the Sacks event, which is not formally “papered,” gets bumped from June 6. Trump is attempting to squeeze all of this money-chasing into a swing that should take him from New York today to Cincinnati and Lexington, Kentucky, tomorrow; then Houston and Dallas on May 22; and finally, Las Vegas on June 8, according to invites I’ve seen. Guests expected to greet him at the Pierre Hotel in New York tonight include Kevin McCarthy, Jets owner Woody Johnson, G.O.P. super-lobbyist Jeff Miller, and potential vice presidential aspirants Doug Burgum, Marco Rubio, and Kristi Noem.

Marissa Mayer Hosts Biden

Over on the Democratic side of Silicon Valley, which President Biden leisurely traipsed through last week, the president’s hosts were two hardened veterans of Web 2.0: Vinod Khosla, the founder of Sun Microsystems, and Marissa Mayer, the early Google executive and controversial former Yahoo C.E.O. For Khosla, the event was a chance to really let it rip after calling Trump a “fraudster, rapist, felon, imbecile” in a recent interview. For Mayer, who cares deeply about climate, the event was also a chance for her to muscle her way back onto the Silicon Valley society A-list after her defenestration from Yahoo, to say nothing of the reported struggles at her new startup, Sunshine. Despite Biden calling her “Melissa” in his introductory remarks—yikes for the poor soul who did the donor briefing binder—there is no flex like having the president of the United States in your living room.Among Mayer’s generally rarefied guest list, one name slated to attend caught my eye: Patrick Collison, the billionaire Stripe founder whose every move is tracked by a legion of fellow brainiac followers. Born in Ireland, Collison recently became a green card holder, and has slowly been raising his donor profile. He gave $250,000 to Hillary in 2016, spent zero in 2020, and then maxed out to Nancy Pelosi a few years ago, probably at the behest of Ron Conway or the like. Collison’s decision to wade back into presidential politics seems noteworthy: After all, Silicon Valley bundlers lust after the ever-so-thoughtful Collison more than any other millennial tech executive, short of Airbnb’s Brian Chesky, who continues to be an Obama bro rather than a more expansive political donor. Collison, I’m told, wasn’t able to attend the event—he was a late scratch. But his mere interest should get the Democratic big money world salivating. I asked Collison if he wanted to talk about his nominal support for Biden, but he wouldn’t bite. But plenty of other tech luminaries made it in, including Box founder Aaron Levie, as well as ascendant Democratic bundler Shannon Hunt-Scott, and Chuck Chai, the longtime head of the Schmidt family office.

Melinda Gates Breaks Free

Of course, the Democratic tech billionaire of the moment has unquestionably been Melinda French Gates. The news that she’s leaving the (now newly renamed) Gates Foundation, and taking $12.5 billion—about two years of the foundation’s average outlay— with her, caused an earthquake in the tightly bound philanthropic sector, where she and Bill are towering figures, akin to royalty—literally knighted by Queen Elizabeth, in fact.The big question among my Gates sources over the last 24 hours: Why now? She had the option to distance herself from the foundation as part of her 2021 divorce, and C.E.O. Mark Suzman outlined a two-year window after which she could leave and run her own philanthropy, which expired in mid-2023. At that time, Melinda’s team was telling everyone, including me, that she was “fully committed as co-chair to its work,” had no plans to walk away, and everything was hunky-dory. Did she really learn anything new over the last 12 months about Bill’s ties to Jeffrey Epstein? I hear Suzman and Bill oversaw a town hall to field inbound today from their thousands of staffers. “Always was Bill’s foundation. Always will be Bill’s foundation,” said one former senior Gates official. Here’s what I know: First, the timing was more than partly driven by the upcoming Giving Pledge annual meeting, which will take place a few weeks from now in Southern California. Bill and Melinda typically preside like benign rulers at these gatherings, whose 200-plus attendees have all promised to donate at least half of their respective substantial fortunes to charity, and their partnership on the dais and in casual conversations is always put under a microscope by their peers. It makes sense that this announcement would happen now, if it was going to happen soon. I’m told by a source that, for the first time, the next-generation inheritors of these fortunes are being invited to the annual retreat, which was famously donors-only, and was appealing for precisely that reason. (Lest you think there will be a gaggle of 20-somethings running around the luxury resort, plenty of these “next gen” donors are in their 40s and 50s.) The other reason is politics. I’ve reported that Melinda has gotten much more involved in partisan causes since the divorce, due in part to the influence of her kids, Rory and Phoebe, who have pushed her in that direction. She’s hired full-time political advisors and has been all over the progressive dark-money world, writing checks to groups that support women running for public office. That includes Republican women, I should note, some of whom oppose abortion rights. You have to read between the lines in Melinda’s public post and Suzman’s internal email to Gates Foundation employees, but I suspect that Melinda doesn’t want to wait until after a possible Trump reelection to get her hands on her $12.5 billion. “Melinda has new ideas about the role she wants to play in improving the lives of women and families in the U.S. and around the world,” Suzman wrote. “And, after a difficult few years watching women’s rights rolled back in the U.S. and around the world, she wants to use this next chapter to focus specifically on altering that trajectory.” Some people close to all of this pushed me away from reading too much into that, arguing that she could just move money into her other women’s work globally—such as expanding contraception access in the developing world. But por qué no los dos? $12.5 billion goes a long way.

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