An inside look at Hawkfish, a Mike Bloomberg-funded tech company that helped his 2020 campaign, which is still working behind the scenes to help elect Joe Biden
having crashed and burned after Elizabeth Warren's blowtorch attack in the Las Vegas debate—but part of it survives as a hundred-person operation dedicated to electing Joe Biden and other Democrats. https://www.wired.com/... Brian Schwartz / @schwartzbcnbc : According to reporting from @StevenLevy , Bloomberg recently gave $35m to Hawkfish, but that investment will only last until Nov. He will not be spending anymore on that product. They also have a new contract with pro-Biden super PAC, Unite the Country. https://www.wired.com/... https://twitter.com/... Cullen Dudas / @cullend : Mike never went away. How Bloomberg's Digital Army Is Still Fighting For Democrats https://www.wired.com/... https://twitter.com/... Jeff Glueck / @jeffglueck : This is the most accurate and best-researched story on @hwkfsh to date, and supporting Democratic and progressive causes on digital. https://www.wired.com/... via @wired
Context & Ripple Effects
Bloomberg stood up Hawkfish in late 2019 as a private tech arm for his presidential run, staffed with ex-Facebook CMO Gary Briggs and ex-Foursquare CEO Jeff Glueck (the company's creation). When his candidacy collapsed after Elizabeth Warren's blowtorch attack at the Las Vegas debate, the firm was orphaned mid-cycle — built for a candidate who no longer existed.
Rather than dissolve, it retooled into something arguably more consequential: Bloomberg put in $35m to keep roughly a hundred people working behind the scenes for Biden and other Democrats through November, landing a new contract with the pro-Biden super PAC Unite the Country. This Wired profile matters because it captures the moment campaign infrastructure outlived the candidate who funded it — and, given the later shutdown once the money stopped flowing, how fragile that arrangement proved.
First-order effects
- Hawkfish's hundred-person team now serves Biden-aligned clients rather than a candidate campaign, with Unite the Country as its marquee contract.
- The $35m commitment buys runway only through Election Day — Bloomberg has said he will spend nothing further on the product after November.
Second-order effects
- Super PACs like Unite the Country gain big-tech-grade data and analytics capacity without building internal teams, blurring the line between official campaign and outside group.
- Hawkfish folds into the broader wave of tech-billionaire election spending — the parallel efforts by Reid Hoffman, Eric Schmidt, Dustin Moskovitz and Laurene Powell Jobs — concentrating digital firepower on the Democratic side.
Third-order effects
- A shop financed by a single patron carries structural fragility: when Bloomberg's commitment expires, the operation loses its reason to exist, which is exactly how it ended.
- If the pattern holds, political tech vendors become recurring, committee-hired infrastructure detached from any one candidacy — raising questions about disclosure, since private companies now do core campaign work for super PACs.
The trend: Campaign technology is shifting from candidate-owned tools to donor-financed vendors serving whichever Democratic effort is live — and dissolving when the patron walks away.