Overview of major efforts by Reid Hoffman, Eric Schmidt, Dustin Moskovitz, and Laurene Powell Jobs to boost Joe Biden's chances in the upcoming election
Eric Schmidt's data play, STAC Labs, is run by Martha Laning, the former head of the Wisconsin Democratic Party. #wipolitics https://twitter.com/... Cate Long / @cate_long : “Republicans have invested far more steadily as of late than have Democrats in the data that powers modern campaigns.” Silicon Valley billionaires cueing up to leverage tech to prop up @JoeBiden. https://www.vox.com/... Lori / @ljt_is_me : Alphabet *Google's parent company* was HRC #1 campaign contributor in money and “in kind” contributions. This should surprise no one that they are doing it again. https://twitter.com/... Ayelet Waldman / @ayeletw : As long as this works, I do not give a fuck how it's done. #Machiavelli https://www.vox.com/... Andrew Wagner / @andrewwagner : Easy prediction: Democrats are totally cool with this, unlike Cambridge Analytica which is Totally Different. https://twitter.com/... Teddy Schleifer / @teddyschleifer : In 2016, Eric Schmidt embeded a group of data minds within the Clinton campaign. Four years later, he is convinced that the real problem is that Democrats don't know how to ~use~ the data. So he has invested in over 20 startups through OneOne Ventures. https://www.vox.com/... Matt Stoller / @matthewstoller : You'll be happy to know that Tara McGowan is being quoted as an expert in digital strategy, with no mention of her ruining the Iowa caucuses with an app. https://www.vox.com/... @joshconstine : Tech leaders are finally stepping up to augment the Democratic party's weak tech & fundraising. Comprehensive overview from @teddyschleifer https://www.vox.com/... Teddy Schleifer / @teddyschleifer : Laurene Powell Jobs is doubling down on voter-registration groups this cycle. Powell Jobs hosted a dozen major donors, like Biz Stone and Ron Conway, at an intimate event at Emerson Collective's HQ in March to hear from Stacey Abrams' FairFight & others. https://www.vox.com/... https://twitter.com/... Teddy Schleifer / @teddyschleifer : Reid Hoffman could spend $100 million this cycle. He was a special guest of Biden's campaign on a call last week. His message to Silicon Valley's product minds? “We don't need you to go and build anything new,” Hoffman said. “There's no time for that.” https://www.vox.com/... Teddy Schleifer / @teddyschleifer : Reid Hoffman's message on the Biden call last week was brimming with irony. Probably more than any other Democratic donor, Hoffman has gone out and built tons of new things. https://twitter.com/... Teddy Schleifer / @teddyschleifer : Eric Schmidt, the former CEO of Google, is heavily funding a secretive group called STAC Labs that is working with Democratic state parties to help them model their data. This is Eric Schmidt's 2020 strategy. https://www.vox.com/... https://twitter.com/... See also Mediagazer
Context & Ripple Effects
This is the 2020 chapter of a story that has been running since the midterms, when ten of Silicon Valley's biggest Democratic donors began rethinking how their money is spent rather than just writing checks. Eric Schmidt ran the same playbook inside the Clinton campaign in 2016, embedding data minds directly with the effort; now he is back with STAC Labs, a secretive group run by former Wisconsin Democratic Party chair Martha Laning and funded heavily by him.
The move lands awkwardly against the backdrop of a growing split between Silicon Valley and the Democratic Party, whose leading presidential candidates have voiced sharp worries about Big Tech even as Alphabet — Hillary Clinton's top 2016 contributor in money and in-kind terms — and its executives line up behind Biden again.
First-order effects
- STAC Labs is already working with Democratic state parties to help them model their data, giving state organizations analytics capacity they would otherwise have to buy or build themselves, with Martha Laning — a veteran of Wisconsin politics — running the operation.
- Reid Hoffman could put up to $100 million this cycle for Biden, and Laurene Powell Jobs is doubling down on voter-registration groups through her funding channels, so the campaign enters the general election with a privately financed data-and-mobilization layer already in place.
Second-order effects
- As Cate Long notes, Republicans have invested far more steadily than Democrats in the data that powers modern campaigns — a gap traced back to the Cambridge Analytica era — so Schmidt-style projects force the Democratic apparatus to compete with, or absorb, billionaire-funded shops rather than rely on the party alone.
- Donor-built groups like STAC Labs shift leverage toward individual funders: vendors, operatives, and state parties increasingly answer to a handful of billionaires whose priorities can diverge from the DNC's, echoing the grassroots-tech scramble startups and activist groups mounted during the 2018 midterms.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, every cycle produces a parallel, privately funded campaign-infrastructure layer alongside the formal party — durable enough that its personnel and tools outlive any single candidate, as the embedded-2016-to-STAC-Labs continuity under Schmidt shows.
- The alliance remains structurally tense: Biden's own staff and the party's Big Tech skeptics coexist uneasily with these donors, a friction that later resurfaces when parts of the Valley flip sides entirely, as Ben Horowitz and Marc Andreessen did by endorsing Trump in 2024.
The trend: Campaign power is migrating from party committees toward billionaire-funded technology and data operations that persist across election cycles regardless of which candidate they serve.