Large U.S. companies with millions of dollars held at SVB are full of liberal employees who gave contributions to Democratic campaigns, according to data from the Federal Election Commission (FEC) and campaign finance watchdog OpenSecrets.
For example, gaming company Roblox held an estimated $150 million worth of cash in SVB, about 5% of its total cash balance, according to Reuters. The company’s employees gave 97% of their individual contributions to Democrats in the 2022 midterm elections and 98% to Democrats in 2020, OpenSecrets found. (RELATED: Biden’s ‘Climate Bank’ Bailout Bolsters Green Firms Poised To Rake In Federal Subsidies)
Too rigged to fail, @LJMoynihan and @arielzilber? https://t.co/jEAtnVK58V
— Doree Lewak (@DoreeLewak) March 13, 2023
Similarly, solar company Sunrun held nearly $80 million of cash deposits at SVB when the bank collapsed. Sunrun’s employees gave 95.34% of their campaign contributions to Democrats in the 2022 election cycle, according to OpenSecrets data. Sunrun CEO Mary Powell provided individual contributions ranging from $250 to $1500 to multiple Democratic congressional campaigns, FEC records show.
Streaming devices company Roku is the exception to the pattern of overwhelmingly Democratic support from the employees of large SVB customers. The company held about $487 million, or 26% of its cash, at SVB, according to Reuters. Roku CEO Anthony Wood spent over $250,000 on Republican campaigns and affiliated organizations in 2022, FEC records show. Among Roku employees, 61.65% of their contributions for the 2022 election went to Republicans, up from 11.55% in the 2020 cycle, OpenSecrets found.
Other large companies with millions of dollars in Silicon Valley Bank such as Ginkgo Bioworks, Oak Street Health, Vir Biotechnology, Circle Internet Financial and liberal news outlet Buzzfeed have employees who provided bulk of their political contributions to Democratic campaigns, OpenSecrets data shows.
Democratic support from the employees of SVB clients is consistent with Silicon Valley as a whole, where 98% of campaign contributions went to Democrats in the 2020 election, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Employees of Amazon, Google parent Alphabet, Apple, Facebook, Microsoft and Oracle donated $5 million to Joe Biden’s 2020 presidential campaign, Wired reported.
The Biden administration announced a plan to bail out all SVB depositors on Sunday, including those with uninsured deposits greater than the $250,000 limit for Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) insurance. Regulators took control of SVB on Friday after a run on the bank caused it to collapse. U.S. based firms disclosed a total of $5 billion in deposits with the bank, Reuters found.