Welcome, Weekenders! In this newsletter:

• The fame, feud and fortune behind billionaire Alexandr Wang

• The best high-tech spas
  

• Plus: An apocalypse found; a marvelous, murderous melodrama; and requiem for a reality TV star.

Until this moment, it was hard to know how seriously to take Donald Trump’s emerging courtship of Silicon Valley leaders. Yes, he had a glitzy fundraiser at David Sacks’ Pacific Heights home earlier this month—and yes, he’d won over people like Palantir adviser Jacob Helberg to help push his agenda in the Bay Area. 

But some media coverage of the purported red wave seemed out of touch. A recent New York Times story, for instance, said “some of Silicon Valley’s Most prominent investors are turning against Biden” and spotlighted Marc Andreessen and Chamath Palihapitiya as examples. A bit of a head-scratcher there: Andreessen and Palihapitiya had long made their political leanings quite clear. This wasn’t anything new.

The dollars didn’t show any dramatic swing toward Trump, either. Pirate Wires, the tech news blog run by Founders Fund’s Mike Solana, recently sat down and counted up the change: It found venture capitalists had donated more than four times more to Democrats than to Republicans ahead of November. 

Thursday’s presidential debate has changed everything. The Silicon Valley shift toward Trump, which didn’t seemed exist as much as it may've appeared, will now surely begin in earnest. Both in Silicon Valley and across the country, Joe Biden’s appeal was on somewhat shaky grounds, and his debate performance reinforced worries about his age and competence. 

After seeing Biden struggle, moderates and party centrists—I’m describing a fair number of the corporate wealthy—will find it much easier to cross their fingers and hope a new Trumpa era with (theoretically) low taxes and reduced regulation can usher in an era of economic prosperity. (If you want to understand this thinking more, I suggest you read through what Bill Ackman has been writing at great length on X.) 

In tech, we’re several years into a period of near-recession, cost cutting and economic doldrums, with only one sector—artificial intelligence—pulsing with much energy and excitement. I get why people would want to hope for someone to push us back toward more promising, prosperous days. It was impossible to watch Biden on Thursday and feel hopeful about his ability to deliver anything.

Nonetheless, I doubt we’ll see an enormous swing in financial support from Silicon Valley toward Trump. Largely because he probably won’t need it unless the race takes some dramatic new turn—like, say, the “hot swap” that “All In” co-host Jason Calacanis has been predicting all along, with Democrats replacing Biden with another candidate. And largely because I think most moderates and centrists migrating to Trump will make the change quietly without public fanfare. After all, Trump is still Trump, a convicted felon who ranked as one of the least popular presidents in modern history.

Late Thursday evening, Dmitri Mehlhorn, chief consligiere to Reid Hoffman, the most vocal Biden supporter in Silicon Valley, surveyed the damage in a note to his fundraising network, according to the Times: “Joe had a horrible night, cementing concerns about his age, his greatest electoral weakness. Our odds of Trumpocalypse II just materially increased.”

With those words, Mehlhorn is sounding a high-pitched public alarm bell, one he wouldn’t ring if he too couldn’t see the outlines of an overwhelming red wave forming in Silicon Valley. 

Abram Brown, editor of The Information’s Weekend section, recently became age eligible to run for president—and, dammit, why not at this point? Until then, you can reach him at [email protected] or find him on X.

The Big Read

Fame, Feud and Fortune: Inside Billionaire Alexandr Wang’s Relentless Rise in Silicon Valley

Small details can say enormous things about a person. Consider this small detail about billionaire Alexandr Wang, which our Cory Weinberg uncovered for this week's Big Read profile: Wang’s artificial intelligence startup, Scale AI, lists icebreaker questions in its internal personnel database, a way for employees to connect easily. What’s Wang’s? “Ask me how to turn Scale into a $100 billion company.”

That’s very telling about Wang’s ambition—and his bravado. Cory, of course, has much more on Wang: his feud with his co-founder, his quest to earn a foothold among the technorati, his remarkable nimbleness in maneuvering Scale toward new revenue streams as others disappeared. He’s a guy who counts Sam Altman among his confidants and enjoys an invite to the Met Ball. He’s worth an estimated $2 billion, and he’s not yet 30.

The Top 5

The High-Tech Spas That Well-Pampered Techies Love

What a weeeek! I feel like I might enjoy spending the entire weekend in a compression suit to drain off my lymphatic fluid. 

Sound strange? I guess you haven’t been keeping up with the well pampered among us, who increasingly like a high-tech rest day at what’s known as a “smart spa.” Our Annie Goldsmith spotlights our favorite such establishments, where amenities include scalp analysis, dermal scans and sensory-deprivation tanks. Have a read, and please excuse me while I go stick my head under a red-light lamp.

Listening: A Rather Hellish Paradise

We’re a decade into the podcast boom “Serial” sparked off, and as much as this form of media has become an indelible part of culture, one particular subcategory has consistently disappointed: episodic series centered on fictional narratives. They’re similar to what our grandparents would’ve called radio plays. 

Dan Houser would like to change our minds about these types of shows with “A Better Paradise,” which stars Andrew Lincoln (from “The Walking Dead”). Houser certainly has a track record for elevating a medium’s creativity: He co-founded Rockstar Games, the outfit behind “Grand Theft Auto” and “Red Dead Redemption.”

In “A Better Paradise,” Lincoln plays Dr. Mark Tyburn, a videogame-cum-artificial intelligence billionaire leading the world toward a digital dystopia in 2040. (No series with a word like “paradise” in its title ever seems to actually take place anywhere idyllic.) As Tyburn recruits a key scientist to join him, he describes the project as “incredible artificial intelligence…like people used to promise us before we all get so bored with it.” Goodness! And to think in 2024 we’re just in the process of growing bored with it.

Reading: Days—and Days—With The Donald

“It actually got very good reviews,” said Donald Trump, reflecting back on the early days of his long-running hit NBC show, “The Apprentice.” “I got unbelievable reviews. Now, that was before my political days.” 

This was one of many, many conversations between The Donald and Ramin Setoodeh, author of the new book “Apprentice in Wonderland.” Quite a few of those talks occurred in the years after Trump lost reelection and found himself exiled to Mar-a-Lago and Trump Tower, continuing a decades-old relationship between Trump and Setoodeh, Variety’s co–editor in chief.

“Apprentice in Wonderland” offers both a definitive pop-culture analysis of “The Apprentice” and a cool-minded assessment of what drives the man poised to retake the White House in November. Mostly, such examinations have been the domain of the political media, and it’s always fascinating to read one authored by a writer with a different kind of background.

Even as the court cases mounted and a reelection campaign loomed in recent years, Trump gave Setoodeh bountiful time and access. In each instance, he posed the same question to Setoodeh: “So do you think I would have been president without ‘The Apprentice’?” Trump would often flip-flop with his own answer. Sometimes, he would next launch into a tangent likening his acting talent to Marlon Brando’s. 

Watching: First Thing, Let’s Kill the Lawyer… 

To forestall shouts of “Objection!” I’ll concede up front that “Presumed Innocent,” the Jake Gyllenhaal courtroom thriller on Apple TV+, isn’t a TV masterpiece. But it’s exactly what I want from summer television: a bingeable melodrama that goes down as easily as an Arnold Palmer.

I shouldn’t be so glib. This is a serious show! Deadly serious, you might say. Gyllenhaal stars as Rusty Sabich, a Chicago prosecutor charged with the murder of his colleague and lover. His wife (Ruth Negga) is furious with him—as she should be—and so is his former district attorney boss (character actor Bill Camp), who thinks the murder, along with Rusty’s affair, cost them their jobs. (He’s not wrong.) But, of course, that doesn’t stop him from quickly agreeing to step in as Rusty’s defense attorney.

The series tumbles along through a series of delightful twists and tur—oh, did I mention how wonderful Gyllenhaal looks in a three-piece suit, one of many subtle nods to the show’s origin as a hit 1987 novel? Well, I have now. (The novel was also made into a well-received Harrison Ford movie in 1990.)

In closing, your honors, I urge you to consider “Presumed Innocent” as an, erhm, guilty pleasure.

Final Thought

LOL. We feel scene.