Few billionaire playthings have had a wilder couple of years than the Democratic analytics startup Deck, which has bounced from the balance sheet of one tech oligarch to another, and from one scandal to the next. First, in 2017, Mark Zuckerberg acquired the company, at the peak of dumb speculation that he was preparing to run for president, only for Zuckerberg—and, somehow, Deck—to get swept up in the Cambridge Analytica scandal. Then, after a few years of independence, it was sold to Sam Bankman-Fried. We all know how that billionaire scandal unfolded, and Deck was subsequently put back on the auction block. At one point in the last year or so, I’ve learned, it appeared that the company might be purchased by Rory Gates, the 24-year-old Microsoft scion who has been moonlighting as an investor in Democratic voter tech.
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