JD Vance has a message for Silicon Valley: The Trump administration is ‘working with you’

Vice President JD Vance was the opening speaker at Andreessen Horowitz’s American Dynamism Summit on Tuesday in Washington, DC. You can watch it for yourself: Vance walking across the stage in a suit and red tie as a16z founders and attendees stood up and cheered. He smiled, waved, and referred to investors Marc Andreessen, Ben Horowitz, and Katherine Boyle by their first names, before pledging to support the entrepreneurs in the room.

“As of a couple of months ago, you have an administration that’s working with you and facilitating your hard work instead of making it harder to innovate, which is, I think, what the last Administration did,” Vance said to the room of a16z-backed companies building companies in aerospace, defense, public safety, supply chain, and manufacturing. He later added: “We recognize now in our administration is the time to align our work interests with those of all of you. It’s time to align the interests of our technology firms with the interests of the United States of America writ large.”

You’d be hard-pressed to miss the significance of this moment. Last summer, Andreessen and Horowitz made waves on their popular podcast by revealing they would vote for Donald Trump in the 2024 election—a pretty divisive move that took much of blue-leaning Silicon Valley by surprise. They followed up by donating $2.5 million each to a pro-Trump PAC. Less than a year later, several partners at the firm have taken official or advisory positions in the White House, the firm has recruited a series of Republican officials (or icons) into the fold, and the sitting vice president is headlining their conference, pledging support to a room of entrepreneurs a16z has backed.

Vance’s presence as the keynote speaker is a statement in and of itself. But so is what he had to say. Vance used strong language to proclaim that the Trump administration wants America to “dominate” artificial intelligence—not be afraid of it. He tried to address some of the rising tensions that exist between two groups of people—the populists, or “laborers” that make up Trump’s long standing supporter base, and the newer Trump-supporting “techno-optimists” (in a nod to Andreessen’s 5,200-word essay published two years ago about how technology is the only perpetual form of growth). 

Vance, who, you’ll recall, had a short stint as a venture capitalist, is positioning himself as someone who sits in both worlds and can bridge the gap. In other words, as the person who can unite the people building AI and the people who are deeply afraid of being replaced by it.

“I think the populists, when they look at the future, and when they compare it to what’s happened in the past—I think a lot of them see alienation of workers from their jobs, from their communities, from their sense of solidarity. You see the alienation of people from their sense of purpose,” he said. “And importantly, they see a leadership class that believes welfare can replace a job and an application on a phone can replace a sense of purpose.” 

Importantly, Vance highlighted some of the more bipartisan talking points in the startup world, too—emphasizing that the administration wants to “slash regulations” and “reduce the cost of energy so that you can build, build, build.” He spent a lot of time discussing the importance of bringing labor back to America—rather than relying on “cheap labor” abroad. Those comments echoed the speech he gave just last Friday in Bay City, Mich., where he discussed America’s “industrial resurgence.”

Vance didn’t mention the administration’s crypto-friendly approach, which has been a huge win for a16z and its expansive portfolio of crypto startups. Technically, the conference was for its American Dynamism portfolio—which is squarely focused on companies that either work with the government or are working on solving national problems—not the firm’s crypto arm a16z crypto.

Still, Vance’s speech clearly resonated and excited many of the people present, according to Joe Cohen, an a16z-backed founder who attended the summit and runs the electric vehicle company Infinite Machine from New York. In a phone call with me after the event, he said it was “inspiring to hear from the VP who is a technologist and is able to talk intelligently to technologists and entrepreneurs.” 

Two months in, Silicon Valley is hardly pledging its allegiance to Trump, even though the president has already made many tech allies and has several outspoken fans among them. In the Valley, there are plenty of people who are upset by Trump attacking DEI policies, his aggressive tactics against illegal immigration, and dislike of climate tech. Some tech-focused policy people in D.C. have told me they are confused about how to engage with the new administration. 

Policywise, it’s still early and unclear exactly how the administration will approach its stated priorities. Cohen said that, while it was helpful to hear Vance lay out the administration's intentions, he would like to see incentives, rather than just tariffs, to encourage startups to manufacture in America—things like tax credits, low-interest financing, or domestic product subsidies. “There needs to be not just a stick, but also a carrot,” he said.

Vance was talking about the next four years in the room on Tuesday, but he may be trying to get the tech community on board with something more long-term, too. Not long after the summit, Vance was selected by the Republican National Committee to oversee its fundraising effort for next year’s midterm elections—the first time this position has been given to a sitting U.S. vice president. This move has furthered speculation that he may decide to run for president himself a few years from now.

Worth pointing out... Yesterday afternoon, SoftBank Group said it would spend $6.5 billion to acquire the chip startup Ampere Computing from Carlyle and Oracle. As part of the deal, Ampere—which makes chips based on Arm technology (the semiconductor and software company SoftBank bought a decade ago)—will become a subsidiary of SoftBank and drop its name. The deal is expected to close in the second half of this year.

A note from D.C.… It’s me, Jessica Mathews, who used to write this newsletter every day, filing today’s newsletter from the U.S. capital. I have been spending a lot more time writing about the intersection of tech and policy—about the cultural shift in Silicon Valley, emerging flavors of lobbying tactics for startups under the Trump administration, efforts to dismantle the CFPB, and Sequoia cutting its policy team. I’m monitoring things like the AI Action Plan and how defense spending cuts could influence the venture-backed shops. If you work in this space, or simply have a lot to say about it, feel free to reach out below! I’d love to chat.

See you tomorrow,

Jessica Mathews
X: @jessicakmathews
Email: jessica.mathews@fortune.com
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This story was originally featured on Fortune.com