Joe Biden drops out of presidential race

U.S. President Joe Biden has introduced he now not plans to hunt reelection, a choice that follows weeks of rising stress from some Democratic Celebration supporters, together with high-profile VCs.

“It has been the best honor of my life to function your President,” Biden stated in a press release. “And whereas it has been my intention to hunt reelection, I consider it’s in the most effective curiosity of my celebration and the nation for me to face down and to focus solely on fulfilling my duties as President for the rest of my time period.”

In a subsequent submit, Biden supplied his “full help and endorsement” for Vice President Kamala Harris to grow to be the Democratic Celebration’s nominee.

The announcement comes after Biden’s look on the June 27 presidential debate reignited considerations in regards to the 81-year-old candidate’s age, prompting elements of the Democratic Celebration and its donor base — together with notable names within the tech world — to stress him to drop out.

Enterprise capitalist Michael Moritz stated this week that Biden should step apart, and he stated he was placing his donations to the Democratic on maintain within the meantime. One other VC, Ted Dintersmith, co-authored a plan for a proposed “blitz major” course of designed to pick Biden’s substitute. Different tech business Democrats have been seen within the course of even when their positions are much less clear — Harris met with a bunch of Silicon Valley donors together with LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman on Friday.

The announcement additionally comes after the weeklong Republican Nationwide Conference, the place former president Donald Trump formally accepted the celebration’s nomination and named JD Vance (a former VC with deep ties to Silicon Valley) as his working mate. X proprietor Elon Musk declared his help for Trump, as did VCs Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, who argued that “the way forward for our enterprise, the way forward for expertise, and the way forward for America is at stake” on this election.

Biden’s time period has been an eventful one for tech: He signed the CHIPS Act with $52.7 billion geared toward revitalizing home semiconductor manufacturing, funded EV and battery manufacturing, and signed one other invoice that may ban TikTok if its mother or father firm ByteDance doesn’t promote the app. He additionally appointed an FTC chair who’s been greater than keen to problem huge tech corporations over antitrust points.