With Vice President Kamala Harris firmly ensconced because the presumptive Democratic nominee Silicon Valley is hopeful the Bay Space native shall be tech and enterprise pleasant.
“Kamala literally comes from this area,” Field CEO Aaron Levie advised Politico. “Her backers have been in tech.”
All through her political profession, Harris, who’s from Oakland, has labored carefully with the tech business. She was beforehand the district lawyer for San Francisco after which California’s lawyer normal, each roles which gave her a familiarity with Silicon Valley.
Previously Harris has had shut ties to former Meta COO Sheryl Sandberg. In 2015, throughout Harris’ Senate run, the 2 appeared collectively at an occasion at Meta’s Menlo Park headquarters. When assembly with Alphabet staff in 2010, Harris referred to them as “family,” citing the actual fact the corporate was based mostly in her house state. Throughout her campaigns for California lawyer normal and U.S. senator, Harris relied on marketing campaign donations from main tech firms. Apple, Alphabet, Amazon, and Microsoft all contributed to Harris’ 2020 marketing campaign for president, based on OpenSecrets. Apple and Alphabet additionally contributed to her 2016 Senate marketing campaign.
Even within the early days of her present presidential bid, a number of the Silicon Valley assist continues. Days after Joe Biden endorsed her, Harris obtained nods of approval from huge Democratic donors together with Sandberg, Melinda Gates, and LinkedIn cofounder Reid Hoffman, who beforehand backed Biden’s marketing campaign. On Tuesday, Netflix cofounder Reed Hastings donated $7 million to the Harris marketing campaign.
However all that hasn’t made Harris draw back from regulating Huge Tech throughout her time in state and nationwide politics. In 2019, as a senator, she backed a California effort to present gig staff at firms like Lyft and Uber further rights, like additional time pay and the correct to unionize. The identical 12 months she stated the federal government ought to “seriously take a look at breaking up” Meta.
That monitor file appears to have made different huge tech business donors cautious of backing her unconditionally. Have been she to point her friendliness to the business, extra donors would assist her marketing campaign, Levie advised Politico.
“If by the end of the week she had a tech policy framework out there, a 10-point plan for pro-business, pro-tech, pro-entrepreneurship, and it was credible,” Levie stated, “I think she could very quickly rally a significant portion of the ecosystem.”
To Levie, a “pro-tech” Harris agenda contains immigration insurance policies that made it simpler to rent expert expertise from overseas and eliminating the administration’s present proposed tax on unrealized capital good points. “Without unrealized capital gains, you literally don’t have money to invest in equity, in startups,” Levie advised Fortune’s Diane Brady.
Below the Biden administration, the Justice Division and Federal Commerce Fee have additionally taken hardline approaches to antitrust, ensnaring Huge Tech’s largest corporations and, in some cases, counting on new definitions of what constitutes a monopoly to open circumstances towards the likes of Amazon and Apple
A spokesperson for the Harris marketing campaign declined to touch upon the file about Levie’s feedback. Field didn’t reply to a request for remark.
As a part of her White Home duties, Harris led the Biden administration’s early coverage work on synthetic intelligence, the present scorching button concern in tech. In Could 2023, Harris met with CEOs of the highest AI corporations, together with Sam Altman, Satya Nadella, and Sundar Pichai.
A number of months later Harris made clear she wouldn’t let the world’s main AI builders off the regulatory hook, simply because their tech was cutting-edge. “President Biden and I reject the false choice that suggests we can either protect the public or advance innovation,” Harris stated throughout a speech in London. “We can and we must do both.”
Even when she was introduced as Biden’s VP choose in August 2020, Silicon Valley had excessive hopes for her function within the White Home. “She grew up around a ton of innovation and realized how important that is for the California economy,” former Oracle president Charles Phillip advised the Wall Avenue Journal in 2020, a number of days after she was introduced as Biden’s working mate.
Now, as Harris contends for the highest job, Silicon Valley hopes {that a} second chunk of the apple with a Democratic candidate will spell extra favorable coverage for tech. “A lot of people wish the Democratic party would stop shooting themselves in the foot,” Levie advised Fortune’s Brady.
