In July 2018, at one of Ben and Felicia Horowitz’s annual star-studded backyard barbecues at their Atherton estate, Black entertainment and media luminaries Gayle King, Tina Knowles, Terry Crews, and Van Jones mingled with Silicon Valley royals Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan, all posing against brightly colored backdrops and ornate floral arrangements.
In one photo posted to Instagram by the hip-hop artist and entrepreneur Divine, then-acting San Francisco Mayor London Breed cozied up arm-in-arm with then-California Senator, now Democratic nominee for president, Kamala Harris.
These kinds of gatherings — of liberal politicians dancing and partying with left-leaning celebrities and tech moguls — were typical for the Horowitzes, who became Silicon Valley power players through Ben’s role in the influential venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz. And their guest list made sense: The Horowitzes were committed Democratic donors who ran a family foundation supporting a host of social justice causes, from prison recidivism to diversity, equity, and inclusion.
Flash forward to today, and Ben Horowitz has publicly endorsed Donald Trump and — in partnership with co-founder Marc Andreessen — plans to give a “significant” amount of money to his campaign. Felicia appears to be on board with the decision, retweeting her husband’s Trump endorsement and scrubbing her social media of all photos with liberal politicians. Through May 2024, she has donated 11 times to Republican politicians and PACs, including Trump’s running mate Sen. J.D. Vance.
How the Horowitzes arrived at this point, however, is a bit of a mystery. For close friends and longtime followers of the couple, the astonishing about-face has left them scratching their heads.
Both had been Democratic donors for decades, pledging nearly $300,000 combined between 2008 and 2023 to candidates on the left, including Barack Obama, Sen. Kristen Gillibrand, and Sen. Cory Booker. Felicia donated $1,000 to Joe Biden’s 2020 election campaign; Ben donated more than $33,000 to Obama-related entities in 2015.
The couple’s philanthropic foundation, the Horowitz Family Foundation, gave more than $1 million to the American Jewish World Service, a human rights organization with which Felicia traveled to advocate for sex workers in Cambodia and the transgender community in Uganda, and to the T.D. Jakes Foundation, a self-described “DEIA organization” (diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility) founded by a prominent Texas pastor. The foundation has also given more than $500,000 to organizations associated with anti-recidivism and prison outreach.
Felicia took a special interest in Glide, a nondenominational church in San Francisco’s Tenderloin district known for its services for homeless people and its commitment to social justice. Horowitz donated nearly $1 million to the organization and was a familiar face at both its prep kitchen and its star-studded galas. In 2016, she received one of the church’s top awards, named after late co-founder Janice Mirikitani, which honors a “local change agent who embodies Janice’s spirit and commitment to transforming lives.” Mirikitani and her husband, the late Glide co-founder Cecil Williams, were also guests at the Horowitz’s 2018 CEO BBQ.
In a since-deleted essay on Medium, Felicia wrote about how she started working at Glide after her son came out as transgender.
“At Glide, I have had the privilege of befriending many wonderful transgender people and that has been so great for me, but it has taught me that the transgender road is every bit as hard as the statistics would indicate,” she wrote. “Thinking about it, writing about it, feeling it, makes me want to burst into tears right now.”
The couple also showed a particular interest in Black culture. Ben quoted a different rap lyric as the epigraph to every chapter in his 2019 business manifesto, “What You Do Is Who You Are”; his father, a radical leftist-turned-conservative activist, once memorably told the New York Times, “Ben is practically Black.” In 2017, Felicia, a Black woman who grew up in Compton and Carson, Calif., once showed up to her good friend Tina Knowles’ gala wearing a dress adorned with the faces of two dozen pioneering Black women.
The couple’s dedication to the culture manifested in their friendships, which included prominent Black celebrities and entrepreneurs like Knowles, King, rappers Nas and MC Hammer, record executives L.A. Reid and Steve Stoute, and fashion designer Dapper Dan.
“It’s amazing,” said one previous recipient of their philanthropy. “When you look at the artists [in their circle] — Shaka [Senghor], Dapper Dan, E-40, just on and on — you would think that they were the dopest people around.”
While it’s unclear how their famous friends feel about their rightward turn, it is indisputable that the couple’s political and philanthropic giving has shifted dramatically in the past year. According to Federal Election Commission records reviewed by The Standard (see charts below), 31 of Ben’s 48 donations, or about two-thirds, went to Republican candidates or PACs, including Vance, Rep. Elise Stefanik, and Sen. Mike Lee, through May 2024.
Eleven of Felicia Horowitz’s 15 political donations through May went to Republican candidates or aligned PACs. Records show she donated $6,600 to Vance’s joint fundraising committee this year.
Neither of the Horowitzes had donated to a Republican before 2022.
Their philanthropic giving also shifted in the year after July 2022, the last period for which foundation filings are available. For the first time in five years, the couple did not give to the AWJS or to Glide, the organization that honored Felicia seven years earlier. They also did not give to the T.D. Jakes Foundation, nor to any of the criminal justice organizations they have donated to in the past. Instead, they gave more than $2 million to the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department Foundation — the law enforcement group’s largest single gift to date.
‘Kiss the crack of my black ass’
The Horowitzes have not given any explanation for the switch in their political affiliations, and they ignored an email requesting comment. In a tweet posted Thursday evening, after The Standard reached out for comment, Ben lashed out at this reporter and the chairman of The San Francisco Standard: “Sir Michael Moritz is now having his fake disinformation ‘newspaper’ fabricate hit pieces on his business rival, me,” he wrote. He continued that Felicia told him, “Mike Moritz and Emily Shugerman can kiss the crack of my black ass.”
Moritz, a former venture capitalist at Sequoia Capital, declined a request for comment.
Horowitz also tweeted that his wife “knows that she has done more than anybody in Silicon Valley to bring people of all walks of life together in tech and lift up the people in society who struggle the most.” He cited her continuing work with “Taking Action for Good, healthcare programs at UMC, MD Anderson Cancer Center, The Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy, Stanford Hospital and The Ruvo Center for Brain Health, and creative programs for disadvantaged youth like the Chloe and Maud Foundation, The Apollo Theater, Las Vegas Dance and Arts, and Where Art Can Occur among many other causes.”
He did not address the sudden dropoff in donations to Glide, the AWJS, or the T.D. Jakes Foundation.
On a podcast episode announcing his support for Trump, Ben Horowitz said he was backing the former president because of his commitment to lower taxes and less regulation — positions Horowitz said would stimulate innovation. Felicia has not commented publicly on her voting plans, though she retweeted the podcast episode as well as her husband’s post defending himself against a TechCrunch article about Black founders who were dismayed by his endorsement of Trump.
Felicia has also deleted her Instagram photos with both Obama and Breed. Her Twitter banner now reads “Exiting the Matrix” — a possible reference to the 1999 movie that has become a popular allegory within right-wing subcultures.
Several Horowitz friends and acquaintances, who wished to remain anonymous in order to speak freely about the couple, said they noticed a shift in the couple’s politics sometime after 2020, during the Covid pandemic and Black Lives Matter demonstrations. The couple enjoyed perhaps their highest-ever profile at the start of the pandemic, largely thanks to the social media app Clubhouse, a virtual hangout space in which Andreessen Horowitz led a $100 million fundraising round. Felicia quickly became one of the app’s most popular users by leading her highly discussed virtual “dinner parties” with Silicon Valley luminaries and celebrity friends.
But with the heightened notoriety came increased scrutiny. Andreessen Horowitz drew criticism for not immediately issuing a statement in support of Black Lives Matter; then, after starting a fund for underserved founders, for pledging what some commentators saw as too little. Felicia also attracted more criticism online due to her rising stature, which she seemed to take personally, according to people who know her.
Multiple sources close to the couple said the social media backlash affected them deeply. Felicia went largely silent on social media, ultimately wiping her Twitter account of all posts before November 2022 and removing her face from her profile photo. The couple moved out of their longtime home in Atherton, relocating to a $14.5 million estate in Las Vegas set behind four gates.
Friends speculated that the couple’s anger and isolation had pushed them to the right. A founder who has received money from Andreessen Horowitz said that the firm’s two founding partners “feel like they are these bullied victims who are making a lone stand.”
“They’ve had this mentality and this experience that they’re under siege for a long time,” he said. “It’s been painful for me to basically watch them go crazy.”
Other Horowitz associates said they had questioned the couple’s commitment to their causes even before the pandemic. One previous recipient of the couple’s philanthropy said he’d noticed a “conservative streak that was pretty evident.” He added: “They buy their way into these cultural spaces, and I don’t know what they contribute besides money.”
Still, this person was surprised the couple had made their support for Trump public. “I think for such savvy people, it was a very bold statement to say what they said,” he said. “There is something about that statement that is based in the audacity of capitalism — to say ‘I’m already rich, but I know the way to whatever comes after rich is going to come under Trump.’”
In recent days, tech leaders have questioned whether the couple had staked their bull position on the Trump campaign too early. Andreessen and Horowitz endorsed the former president on July 16, less than one week before Biden dropped out.
Biden’s replacement, Vice President Kamala Harris, is exactly the kind of candidate the couple would have supported in the past: a moderate Democrat, a Black woman, and a frequent flier in their social groups. (Another photo, posted by Arianna Huffington in 2015, shows Harris sitting at a Glide gala with Jules Horowitz, the couple’s son.)
Harris has also injected a fresh energy into the race, making Trump less of a shoo-in for the presidency. Two founders repeated a joke that has been traveling around tech circles, that it was “such a VC thing to buy at the top.” Another founder put it more pointedly: “I’m just wondering what they’re gonna do when Kamala wins. Like, how do you walk that back?”
Regardless of the election’s outcome, liberal followers and admirers of the Horowitzes said their decision to back Trump had sullied their perspective of the couple.
“It’s alarming to me as a Black woman that a prominent, well-informed, sophisticated Black woman — who is very well-informed about the risk posed by a Trump-Vance administration — would take this stance,” said Drew Dixon, an activist and former record executive, who became a fan of Felicia after reading the Medium essay about her trans son. “I think it’s an abdication of her privilege and power and platform to endorse and support this person who will harm so many people who look like her.”
Sandra Garcia, a marketing and branding specialist who met Horowitz at a conference in San Francisco, said the endorsement surprised her, too. “Hearing Ben speak — and Felicia, who during the pandemic had her Clubhouse group where she gave opportunities to various different voices — it’s surprising to hear,” she said.
“I think that may be the reaction from other folks who are also very familiar with their work,” she said. “And I do think it could be received as troubling.”