In return, they got access, deregulation and a green light for rapid AI expansion, a report has said, adding that right-leaning figures like Elon Musk and venture capitalist David Sacks took formal roles in the government. For the first two years of President Donald Trump’s second term, Silicon Valley’s most powerful executives made a public show of loyalty. Top CEOs sat on the dais at Trump’s inauguration and showered the administration with gifts and donations, including money for the White House ballroom. Now, after Democrats swept races across the country in midterms last week – driven in large part by voter anger over data centers and artificial intelligence – a different faction of the tech world is quietly organising a course correction.
Both Meta and Amazon recently committed $1 billion each to host communities for local investments like schools and job training. For example, Google and Microsoft recently announced they will stop forcing government officials to sign controversial nondisclosure agreements that kept data center plans hidden from the public. Moreover, Amazon reportedly pledged to share more details about how much water and energy its data centers consume. “As you have noted, communities should have a voice, households should not be left paying for new infrastructure and development should protect local water, power, and quality of life. We strongly support those principles,” CoreWeave CEO Michael Intrator wrote.
On Saturday, data center firm CoreWeave also moved to build bridges with newly elected Democrats, writing to congratulate Texas Governor-elect Gina Hinojosa, who campaigned on restricting data centers.
To win back public trust, these left-leaning voices are said to be floating ideas that would have been unthinkable in Silicon Valley until recently. Instead, he said, tech firms must let local communities “increasingly exercise more of a direct say” over where corporate money goes. “Communities have every right to use their control over these projects so as to ensure that they are getting meaningful benefits,” Lehane added. “They won an election having supported Trump thinking we can do whatever we want, and that was wrong,” one of the people familiar with the discussions said, The Washington Post says. On the November 8 episode of the “All-In” podcast some hosts sounded unusually reflective. It’s not true,” said tech investor Chamath Palihapitiya, who fundraised for Trump.
Citing eight strategists, executives and investors familiar with the talks, a report by The Washington Post claims that in private group chats and phone calls, left-leaning donors and advisers are working to take control of the industry’s agenda away from Trump-aligned tech leaders. The report, however, noted that it is still too early to know if this group will sway the broader tech sector as Congress changes hands. The proposals include slowing down or pausing data center construction, pouring billions of dollars into local schools and job training, requiring union labor at data centers and protecting residents from higher electricity bills. Some industry figures have already started making this case publicly. In a September blog post, investor Reid Hoffman urged the tech sector to offer Americans a clear economic pitch, writing that “the public deserves the benefits of AI as soon as there are any, not a generation from now after a hard transition. OpenAI’s chief global affairs officer, Chris Lehane, echoed that sentiment in an interview, saying companies will need to move “beyond the table stakes of paying for energy, preserving water, addressing noise and generating tax revenue. Even before any new laws are passed, public pressure and shifting politics are reportedly forcing tech companies to offer bigger concessions to the towns hosting their data centers. Meanwhile, some of them are breaking with the Trump-aligned crowd as much of the pushback from the left is aimed directly at the right-wing tech leaders who championed the current approach. Critics inside the industry blame figures like former AI czar David Sacks, investor Marc Andreessen and their online supporters as well as those tech leaders who issued doomsday AI warnings for sparking the public backlash. Following the midterm defeats, the normally vocal pro-Trump wing of Silicon Valley went noticeably quiet. “I thought top-down economics can still work. I thought that when you had asset owners building assets and investing in the economy, these things can get to everybody else. It’s clearly not happening. Still, Trump’s tech allies retain influence inside the White House, and they are already gearing up for a fight with the incoming Congress. On the same podcast, Sacks argued that Democrats would use AI rules to expand government control: “I believe that Democrats want to create a surveillance and censorship state that’s turbocharged by super intelligence. You use AI every day. Now get your AI Quotient. Take the AIQ test.
Sacks has previously blamed the public’s resistance on tech factions that spent years issuing apocalyptic warnings about AI.