The GOP's Message for Tech Billionaires: Be Like Peter Thiel

WIRED

4 days ago

Jul 23, 2025 11:00 AM One lesson Republican insiders took away from Elon Musk's spectacular flameout? Be wary of billionaires who love the spotlight. Photo-illustration: WIRED Staff; Getty Images
The unholy alliance between Silicon Valley and the Republican Party is no longer new. Between Elon Musk's descent upon Washington, the number of Big Tech billionaires flying in to kiss President Donald Trump's ring, and the expansion of the role of companies like Palantir in the US government, former president Joe Biden's warning about the impending oligarchy has certainly borne out.
All of this raises a question: Six months into Trump's presidency, just how important are Silicon Valley billionaires to this administration now, anyhow?
The answer, sources from Trumpworld tell WIRED, is complicated.
The short of it: Yes, Silicon Valley billionaires still matter to the Republican party, though not as much as they did during the homestretch of the 2024 campaign. But now, following Musk's spectacular flameout, strategists and aides are a little more wary of these billionaires centering themselves ahead of the president and party.
A recurring theme of my reporting for WIRED has been the lack of familiarity with these Silicon Valley players within Trumpworld and inside the White House. There has been a consistent willingness among some of Trump's closest advisers and aides to purposefully avoid even knowing what Musk was up to with his so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
But now, Republicans think they've learned how to manage Silicon Valley's competing interests better, and most importantly know they're going to need all the Silicon Valley money they can get heading into elections in 2026 and 2028. This includes the cryptocurrency wing of Silicon Valley, which has proven extremely profitable for the Trump family and may well be the glue holding this coalition together.
Behind the scenes, adjustments and accommodations are being made to keep it going. 'Donor maintenance,' my sources tell me, is the key operating principle. Already, Americans have heard about the likes of Mark Zuckerberg at Meta, Jeff Bezos at Amazon and in his capacity as owner of The Washington Post, Sundar Pichai at Alphabet (the parent company of Google and YouTube), Microsoft's Satya Nadella, Uber's Dara Khosrowshahi and others bending the knee, ponying up donations, and doing whatever it takes to stay in the good graces of the second Trump administration. Others, like venture capitalist Marc Andreessen, got with the program early—the firm​​ 'Andreessen-Horowitz has been very aligned with Republicans the last few years,' another one of my sources tells me.
A Google spokesperson declined to comment on behalf of Pichai and a Meta spokesperson declined to comment on behalf of Zuckerberg. Representatives for Bezos, Nadella, and Khosrowshahi did not return requests for comment.
For several of the well-placed GOP sources I spoke with for this inaugural edition of Inner Loop, there's more loathing of the disruptor mentality that comes with these new arrivals, and less fear over the downsides of the GOP saddling up with them. 'These guys, especially the young disruptors who make a lot of money, they don't think they have to do what everyone else does,' a GOP strategist who's been fundraising in Silicon Valley going back to the dotcom boom tells me. 'You've gotta kinda guide 'em the right way … They won. They have access to the White House. And they feel good about their investment because they won.'
The White House did not return a request for comment.
That return-on-investment mindset makes for a harder sell heading into an election where Republicans are likely to lose their House majority and cede any chance at further legislation until at least 2029. 'You're going into a midterm where it'll be a little tougher,' says the strategist. Lessons Learned
My sources tell me there have been a few lessons learned following Musk's historic crash-out.
Rule number one: Don't overstay your welcome, and don't get too big for your breeches.
'The lesson learned was: Don't idiotically think you're smarter than everyone in the room and elected along [with] Trump,' a second Republican strategist tells me in a text message, also requesting anonymity to candidly discuss private deliberations. 'Elon's act got old really quick. By the time he was wearing multiple hats, it was like congealed milk.'
A senior administration official tells me Musk's fatal flaw, aside from what appeared to be an erratic personality, was placing himself too prominently in the public eye and accordingly setting expectations too high for DOGE. 'A lot of this starts with Elon setting unrealistic expectations in the public sphere. There was never an easy trillion to cut, certainly not one you could cut,' the administration source says, alluding to Musk's shifting commitments to cut at least $2 trillion in federal spending before gradually ratcheting them down. 'Setting up expectations that couldn't be met.'
The first Republican strategist, who's seen a thing or two in the long arc of the tech world's foray into politics, said an old axiom of his applies all too well to the post-Musk era.
'I think what the lesson learned from Elon is, as I like to say, the podium's for the principals. Don't get on the podium. Don't get on the podium,' the first strategist says.
This became especially true inside the White House after Musk failed to secure a victory in the Wisconsin Supreme Court race back in the early spring, despite groups connected to Musk pumping nearly $20 million into the contest and publicly campaigning not just for the Republican candidate, but also 'the future of the world.'
Rule number two, in other words: If you're a tech billionaire, stay in your lane—in the coffers, and out of the spotlight.
Someone who has done that rather well, my sources tell me, is Peter Thiel, the billionaire megadonor, Palantir cofounder, and card-carrying member of the so-called PayPal mafia alongside Musk and Trump's 'White House & AI Crypto Czar' David Sacks, two notable GOP converts. Several sources told me he's in a league of his own in how he operates as a GOP donor, and notably one who predates many of the Johnny-come-latelies who jumped on the Trump train after the assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania. His influence, sources say, is comparable only to that of Republican super giver Miriam Adelson, the widow of casino magnate Sheldon Adelson.
Thiel, who bankrolled Vice President JD Vance's 2022 Senate campaign, set the early stages for MAGA succession planning. With Musk gone, WIRED reported, Vance is now the primary point of contact in the White House for Silicon Valley's billionaires, and he has the inside track on their funds for the 2028 Republican presidential primary. And everyone knows that Thiel brought him to the dance.
'Thiel's an interesting one,' a third GOP strategist tells me. 'He's spread his bets. Some have paid off, and some haven't.'
Maybe most important to these strategists: 'Most voters don't have a fucking clue who Peter Thiel is.' He's behind the scenes, but very much still present in Republican politics.
Thiel, like the Adelsons, 'didn't just write checks,' the first strategist explains. 'They were involved, and they were present. And that's the bigger thing I can tell ya: The tech people that had the most influence were the ones that were present.'
Present, in this sense, means meeting privately with lawmakers and their staff. (It does not, in this context, mean giving an off-the-wall podcast interview to New York Times columnist Ross Douthat, in which they discussed transhumanism and other topics.)
'The Peter Thiels of the world have been doing this for a while,' the first strategist says. 'Elon Musk has not.' Despite Musk throwing nearly $300 million toward supporting Trump in 2024, he 'amassed influence, went to the White House, and didn't get everything he wanted.'
Alongside Thiel, this strategist mentioned billionaire and Oracle cofounder Larry Ellison as the next best example of how to play the game.
'Obviously the Larry Ellisons of the world and the Peter Thiels, they have deep policy issues that they care about. Now, it's not gonna affect their bottom line personally anytime soon. They're gonna shape policy for generations.' Ellison and Thiel did not return requests for comment.
For other Silicon Valley donors to become real players, this strategist said, they need to spread their donations across multiple candidates and organizations, consistently, cycle-to-cycle.
'Most of the technology guys and the Silicon Valley guys, the one thing that was consistent: They were disrupting old-school economies that have been involved for not 10 years or 20 years, but for generations.' They thought they could do the same for politics. But, as the first strategist points out, 'that's not a long term strategy.' The Crypto Glue Holding It All Together
It's not just about the Benjamins, either. The future of cryptocurrency—the cashout option of choice for alumni of Trump's first administration and previous campaigns, as well as Trump's own family—matters a whole lot.
'Crypto might be the glue that keeps the tech world, so to speak, glued to politics,' a Republican operative close to the president tells WIRED. 'Trump was very, very smart by moving positively into the tech world in various forms.'
Trump and Vance are all in on crypto, and they have gone back-to-back as key speakers at the two most recent annual Bitcoin conferences. The industry made its presence known with lavish events at last summer's Republican National Convention.
As long as the Trump family can keep making money off of cryptocurrency and the value of these currencies, memecoins, and other speculative digital assets keep growing, there will always be a reason for the donors to pony up again. Just this month, crypto billionaires Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss donated $1 million total to a super PAC supporting Wisconsin gubernatorial candidate Bill Berrien. A representative for the Winklevoss twins did not return a request for comment.
However, several of these strategists told me the crypto crowd is the hardest to deal with. 'A lot of bumbling and fumbling,' the first one tells me. 'It's kind of an example of the learning curve of crypto. They've been late to the game on so much,' the third strategist says, referring to a general misunderstanding of how Trump's GOP operates in Washington. The Hard Sell for the Midterms
Even with cryptoworld and much of Silicon Valley all in for Trump, the pitch to the billionaires going into midterms won't be easy. Republicans are bracing for a wipeout in the House in the midterm elections if historical trends hold—not to mentionTrump's sagging approval across almost every major policy issue.
'Going into the midterms … the amount of ask for large six- and seven-figure donations from the NRCC, the NRSC, the presidential stuff, Trump, all the super PACs, the RGA, I mean, you name it—there's going to be a flood in the phone calls and inboxes of every one of these people that participated two years ago,' the seasoned GOP strategist says.
The pitch to these newcomers, for someone like House speaker Mike Johnson, is to be team players: Spread the money far and wide, not just on a few safe bets.
That's where the unique charm of Trump comes into play, and where the GOP's apparent next standard-bearer, Vance, will be put to the test in holding this coalition together. Republicans on Capitol Hill point to former House speaker Kevin McCarthy and Trump himself as some of the best in the business at picking up the phone, inviting Silicon Valley elites to events, and making them 'feel special'—but the donors also need someone to tell them their money is not going toward a short-term return.
'The donor maintenance part of the bigger donor stuff is—and look, love 'em, hate 'em or not. Trump was great at that,' the first strategist says. 'Come to Mar-a-Lago, you give a bunch of money, you're having dinner, you're watching Trump walk into that room, work the crowd. He made you feel special. He made you feel important.'
Maybe not a bad return on investment, after all.
This is an edition of Jake Lahut's Inner Loop newsletter. Read previous coverage from Jake Lahut here.