Tech's money isn't buying candidates' 2024 love

Presidential politics is serving tech leaders something they're not used to: irrelevance. From low-polling tech founder candidates to low-impact mega-donors, big tech wallets are finding it hard to make a dent in the 2024 race. The leading 2024 candidates — President Biden (D) and former President Trump (R) — are the biggest Silicon Valley skeptics in the field. Tech's current generative-AI wave is less likely to benefit any single candidate than to become a weapon of choice for foreign adversaries working to undermine American democracy and Americans seeking cheap ways to generate misinformation. While tech fortunes are funding candidates unlikely to make a difference in 2024 — unless one of the front-runners suddenly keels over — the front-runners are laying out agendas hostile to tech-industry interests. Longer-shot candidates are taking dollars from or shots at tech with little impact either way. Oracle founder Larry Ellison is the top donor to the campaign of Sen. Tim Scott (R - SC). But the $35 million he has committed has so far delivered a 2 percent poll rating. Overall, tech companies can have more election impact with their misinformation policies than their founders or investors have with their wallets.