SAN JOSE, Calif. — In the latest and most concrete example of the tech industry elite’s distaste for Donald Trump, Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz has pledged $20 million to help Hillary Clinton win the presidency and defeat the Republican presidential nominee.

In a Medium post late Thursday, Moskovitz wrote that he and his wife, Cari Tuna, have never given to a presidential candidate before but felt “compelled to act” given the stakes in November’s election.

“We cannot ignore the remarkable alignment between these two visions for society and the choices in this year’s election,” he wrote. “The Republican Party, and Donald Trump in particular, is running on a zero-sum vision, stressing a false contest between their constituency and the rest of the world.”

Advertisement

Moskovitz, who was Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s roommate at Harvard, has a net worth of $10.5 billion, according to Forbes. In 2008, he left Facebook to co-found Asana, a San Francisco-based maker of work-collaboration software, and is its chief executive.

In July, Moskovitz was one of about 150 tech CEOs, investors, academics and others who signed an open letter calling Trump “a disaster for innovation.” The tech industry has for the most part been no friend to Trump, speaking out loudly against the candidate’s immigration policies and more.

While tech executives such as Apple CEO Tim Cook have held fundraisers for Clinton, Intel CEO Brian Krzanich canceled a planned fundraiser for Trump in June. And Hewlett Packard Enterprise CEO Meg Whitman, a Republican, has also started stumping for Clinton.

One of Trump’s only high-profile supporters from the tech industry is billionaire entrepreneur, investor and longtime libertarian Peter Thiel, co-founder of PayPal and Palantir Technologies.

Thiel, who was an early investor in Facebook and sits on its board, was a California delegate for Trump at the Republican National Convention. He gave a prime-time speech at the RNC in July in which he said he agreed with Trump that “it’s time to end the era of stupid wars and rebuild our country.”

In addition, Thiel wrote in a Washington Post op-ed earlier this week that “Trump’s heretical denial of Republican dogma about government incapacity is exactly what we need to move the party — and the country — in a new direction.”

With their donation, Moskovitz and Tuna — a former reporter who now heads Good Ventures, the couple’s philanthropic foundation — become the second-largest contributors to the Democrats in this election after hedge fund billionaire Tom Steyer, according to The Associated Press. OpenSecrets.org, the Center for Responsive Politics website that tracks contributions, shows that Steyer has given nearly $40 million to Democrats and liberals in this election cycle. Thiel has given $2 million to Republicans, the site shows.

Advertisement*

Moskovitz said the money will go to the Clinton campaign, other Democratic Party committees, the League of Conservation Voters (LCV) Victory Fund, MoveOn.org, Color of Change and others.

“We hope these efforts make it a little more likely that Secretary Clinton is able to pursue the agenda she’s outlined, and serve as a signal to the Republican Party that by running this kind of campaign — one built on fear and hostility — and supporting this kind of candidate, they compel people to act in response,” he wrote.

___

(c)2016 The Mercury News (San Jose, Calif.)

Visit The Mercury News (San Jose, Calif.) at www.mercurynews.com

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

Advertisement