(Bloomberg) -- For the last two years, startup marketing executive Amber Fehrenbacher flung herself into the niche technology event the All-In Summit, hosting a women’s dinner, posing for selfies with summit celebrities like investor Jason Calacanis, and reveling in a startup scene she called “community at its finest.”
But she won’t be attending this year’s event, which starts on Sunday, with tickets that cost $7,500 a pop. One reason, she explained in a post on X, is politics.
As Silicon Valley has descended into uncharacteristic partisan rancor this year, few institutions have personified the shift more than the All-In Podcast. Its hosts, Calacanis, investor Chamath Palihapitiya, entrepreneur David Friedberg and venture capitalist David Sacks, have mostly filled the show with free-wheeling banter about the tech landscape. But they’ve increasingly embracing political commentary over time. And in recent months Sacks and Palihapitiya have thrown their support to Donald Trump, becoming two of the most visible investors to do so, and making the podcast a de facto standard bearer for many VCs’ rightward turn this election cycle.
This year’s All-In Summit, an offshoot of the podcast, will be a closely watched tech event, partly because of its hosts’ new status as political influencers. The program is opening with Bari Weiss, a political commentator and returning guest, and Senator Kyrsten Sinema, a Democrat-turned-independent from Arizona, according to a list of speakers reviewed by Bloomberg. Last year’s opener was Ray Dalio, the founder of hedge fund Bridgewater Associates.
A spokesperson declined to comment on the group’s political slant or to disclose details on crowd size or final guest list. And while Sacks has hosted a fundraiser for Trump and is slated to host another for his running mate JD Vance on Sunday, in a post on X this week Calacanis said that the podcast itself doesn’t endorse candidates.
Even so, there’s another speaker who ranks among the most hyper-partisan executives in tech. Elon Musk, slated to make a repeat appearance, has helped launch a super political action committee to support Trump’s bid for the presidency.
Traditional tech figures are also on the speaking list for the summit, like Uber Technologies Inc. Chief Executive Officer Dara Khosrowshahi and Salesforce Inc. CEO Marc Benioff. The guest lineup, which has yet to be posted, also includes NASA astronaut Woody Hoburg, Altos Labs chief scientist Juan Carlos Izpisua Belmonte and Gecko Robotics CEO Jake Loosararian.
Hosted in Los Angeles, the summit will feature two days of speaking, peppered with events like drinks and poker, plus a “Top Gun” beach volleyball party and a “Back to the Future”-themed soiree. This year, only the pricier VIP tier is available, along with a scholarship passes for those needing financial assistance. That’s different from last year’s affair, which 1,800 people attended, where general access cost only $1,500. That may be part of the reason that as recently as late August, the summit’s website was still inviting people to apply for entry, with Friedberg saying earlier in the month the conference likely would conduct an “overflow ticket sale.” The tickets are now listed as sold out.
Launched in 2020, he show itself has grown rapidly, amassing more than 400,000 followers on Spotify, and nearly 600,000 subscribers on YouTube. The hosts’ views differ and aren’t always representative of the rest of tech — which leans Democratic as evidenced by the hundreds of names on a “VCs for Kamala” list — but they’ve come to represent a Republican and libertarian strain in the industry. And while the group still talks about tech issues, it’s also recently hosted a series of presidential candidates, including Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Dean Phillips and Trump.
Not everyone appreciates the pivot. Fehrenbacher, the marketing executive, lamented that the “content has shifted far away” from the nuanced discussions of software, investment strategy, and other startup-related topics that hooked her in the first place. “I like to listen to people who are domain experts,” she wrote. While the All-In Podcast hosts may bring deep professional experience in tech, they still have less experience in politics. In direct message exchange on X, Fehrenbacher didn’t elaborate further.
Other listeners are just waiting for the election to be over. “Those complaining about it being more political lately are missing the point,” wrote a reviewer with the handle MyKindofLuck on Apple Inc.’s podcast site, pointing out the pre-election timing. “I’m confident that once the election isn’t the top topic in the nation the content will be back to the original.”
But Silicon Valley’s interests have become more closely aligned with policy in recent years. Tech has a direct stake in a growing number of issues, from AI regulation to tax policy. Meanwhile, the All-In podcasters seem to be embracing their newfound political clout. Even after November, it’s unclear if they’ll give it up.
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