How a Network of Tech Billionaires Helped J.D. Vance Leap Into Power

Last month, J.D. Vance flew to San Francisco to hold a fund-raiser for Donald J. Trump and to host a private dinner afterward with two dozen tech and crypto executives and investors.

The location was the opulent Pacific Heights mansion of David Sacks, an entrepreneur and podcaster whom Mr. Vance had met through the tech investor Peter Thiel. Mr. Vance, now 39 years old, had worked for one of Mr. Thiel’s investment firms in San Francisco in 2016.

During the $300,000-a-person dinner that night, Mr. Trump, seated between Mr. Sacks and another tech investor, Chamath Palihapitiya, informally polled the room about whom to choose as his running mate. Even with another vice-presidential hopeful, Doug Burgum, the governor of North Dakota, in attendance, Mr. Sacks, Mr. Palihapitiya and others all had the same answer: Pick Mr. Vance, they told Mr. Trump, according to two people with knowledge of the exchange.

Mr. Vance, the Ohio senator selected by Mr. Trump this week to be his running mate, spent less than five years in Silicon Valley’s tech industry, where he worked as a junior venture capitalist and a biotech executive. But while he made little mark on the tech scene, it was a formative period that has powered Mr. Vance’s stunning ascent in the Republican Party — and is likely to influence his political future.

Mr. Vance’s stint in tech was crucial for forging connections with billionaire executives and investors, including Mr. Thiel, Mr. Sacks and Elon Musk, who owns X. Over and over, those men have funded Mr. Vance’s political ambitions, raised his profile among other wealthy donors and on social media, and lobbied Mr. Trump to choose him as his running mate.