For the first time in more than a decade, the political energy in Silicon Valley is not on the left but on the right. Larry Ellison is privately telling people that he wants his friend Tim Scott to run for president. Donald Trump’s super PAC is soliciting the involvement of Peter Thiel. Tech donors in Orange County are preparing to welcome Ron DeSantis for another offertory. The Silicon Valley G.O.P. shadow primary in 2024, in other words, is shaping up to resemble its Democratic equivalent in 2020, when  candidates fought to lock down support of tech contributors and mega-donors before launching their campaigns.

I’ve been talking with Republican fundraisers in recent days to capture the state of the money game at the start of the 2024 cycle. Here are the latest murmurs and updates on the G.O.P.’s top players in Silicon Valley.

The Ellison-Scott Lovefest

Oracle chairman Larry Ellison has had a hot-and-cold relationship with Trump, joining his election-denialism strategy sessions one moment and ditching his own fundraisers the next. More recently, Ellison has privately expressed that he’s ready to see the G.O.P. turn the page. Foremost on his mind is Tim Scott, to whom Ellison was introduced via his friendship with another South Carolina senator, Lindsey Graham, who plays an unusual role for Ellison as his de-facto emissary to the G.O.P. Ellison has since donated some $35 million to Scott’s super PACs over the last two years or so—an absurd war chest for an incumbent in a deep-red state. But Scott has national ambitions, and Ellison hasn’t been coy either, telling fellow Republicans that he’d very much like Scott to run for president, I’ve been told.