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Reid Hoffman said it’s not surprising that some of his Silicon Valley pals have left the Democratic Party.
“I regret this and wish it didn’t happen, but I think the Democratic Party really did alienate a section of Silicon Valley and the tech people, whether it was attacks on crypto, whether it was kind of just attacks on Big Tech, all these things,” Hoffman told Palantir cofounder Joe Lonsdale on a recent episode of Lonsdale’s “American Optimist” podcast.
A Democratic megadonor, Hoffman, spent billions trying to help Vice President Kamala Harris in 2024, only to see some of his former collaborators, including Elon Musk, go all out for Donald Trump. Hoffman said some in tech began to see Democrats as wanting to snuff out innovation.
“One of the things that I think Silicon Valley shares is this like deep view that the way you make massive progress for humanity is creating scale technologies,” Hoffman said. “And the principal way of creating scale technologies is companies, and so if you’re attacking that and limiting it, then you have all kinds of problems.”
Hoffman expressed frustration that, despite being the cradle of tech, California’s regulatory environment makes it difficult for companies to pursue some innovations. He pointed to Aurora Innovation, a now publicly traded autonomous trucking company that Hoffman’s Greylock invested in, as an example. In May, Aurora said it had successfully tested a driverless commercial truck on I-45 in Texas.
“I mean, look, so Aurora, a company headquartered in California, but, of course, in the modern regulatory environment, where are we driving our first heavy-duty trucks? Texas, of course,” Hoffman said.
Hoffman said he sends everyone he talks to a copy of Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson’s bestseller “Abundance” because it shows that Republican-led states have better policies for things like autonomous vehicles and construction.
“Abundance, while you could argue that it’s written from a progressive standpoint, is very clearly there are a bunch of things that red states are doing better than blue states, and we should learn from them,” Hoffman said. “We should do them.”
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