Elizabeth Warren, who wants to break up Big Tech as president, has raised more money from tech employees than anyone else
- FEC data show that Elizabeth Warren has more Silicon Valley campaign contributions than other democratic candidates, Bloomberg reported.
- Warren leads with Silicon Valley donors, followed by Bernie Sanders and Pete Buttigieg.
- Warren has been the most vocal candidate about breaking up big tech companies like Facebook and Amazon.
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Presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren raised more than $173,000 from tech employees in the third quarter, more than any other candidate, according to a Bloomberg report.
Warren's support among the tech set is striking, given that she is running on a platform of clamping down on the tech industry and even breaking up companies like Amazon, Facebook, and Google. If elected, she has said she will appoint regulators to undo anti-competitive tech mergers.
Bernie Sanders raised the second largest amount of money in Silicon Valley, about $155,000, according to the Bloomberg report by Eric Newcomer and Bill Allison that analyzed Federal Election Commission data. Sanders said that he "absolutely" supports breaking up big tech, and he has a plan to implement partial employee ownership of all large companies, which would affect these tech companies.
Pete Buttigieg, who Bloomberg reported ranked third in Silicon Valley donations, has a notably different position on big tech from those of Warren and Sanders. Buttigieg does not plan to break up big tech companies, although he has mentioned worries about privacy and data ownership. On Monday, Bloomberg reported that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been privately recommending campaign hires for Buttigieg. So far, 2 of the recommendations have been hired.
The Warren, Sanders, and Buttigieg campaigns did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Warren has pledged not to accept large donations from tech executives. Her campaign has been in contact with Facebook, Zuckerberg told NBC Nightly News. Zuckerberg has not spoken to Warren himself, but he says the company has been in contact over her concerns about its misinformation policies.
Bloomberg looked at contributions from ten large tech companies, including Facebook, Google, and Apple, to arrive at these numbers. Employees at Google parent company Alphabet Inc. were the biggest donors, followed by Microsoft. Contributions from employees at all ten companies totalled about $752,000.