Mayor Pete Buttigieg is planning five fundraisers across Silicon Vally on Friday, in an effort to bring more tech donors to his campaign, according to Recode.
Buttigieg has already impressed young tech executives in the San Francisco area. Now their more wealthy colleagues are also taking interest in his campaign — collecting about $330,000 in itemized contributions from the Bay Area last quarter, Recode reports.
Since hosting Mark Zuckerburg in South Bend in 2017 during his tour of the midwest, Buttigieg has become a well-known face in the tech community.
In January, Buttigieg expressed sympathy with Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg in an interview with National Public Radio about the responsibilities and evolution of social media.
“I think he’s taking those responsibilities seriously,” Buttigieg said. “But I think he’s also confronted — and every one of these big companies — with the reality that their corporate policy decisions are now public policy decisions. And I don’t know if he’s fully been able to master that, and I don’t know that anybody in the sector has.”
But while Buttigieg is attracting some of the younger Silicon Valley donors and investors, former Vice President Joe Biden is getting attention and funding from more established Hollywood and tech moguls. On Wednesday night, Biden attended a fundraiser co-hosted by film producer Jeffrey Katzenberg and former Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt.