President Donald Trump’s biggest donors during the first year of his second term consisted of artificial intelligence and tech CEOs, an equity boss on the board of TikTok’s parent company and people whose relatives were facing years in prison.
For many of the wealthy donors, contributing to the Trump-affiliated super PAC MAGA Inc. was something they had never done before.
A dozen of them gave at least $1 million to the super PAC in late 2024 and 2025, eclipsing any federal political donations they had given to others previously, according to an analysis of Federal Election Commission records conducted by NBC News.
Contributing to Trump’s war chest will likely prove critical to the upcoming midterms, where Republicans could lose their slim majority in the House.
Among the biggest donors to MAGA Inc. last year was OpenAI CEO Greg Brockman, who gave $12.5 million in September 2025, while his wife Anna also gave the same amount on the same day, according to contribution filings.
Until Brockman dropped the multimillion-dollar donation, the most he had ever contributed to political campaigns was around the $2,700 mark, a sum he gave to 2016 Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, and former Republican Rep. Patrick McHenry in 2018, according to NBC News.
Brockma the donation in a social media post on X in December 2025, where he praised Trump directly for his “willingness to engage directly with the AI community and approach emerging technology with a growth-focused mindset.”
“This year, my wife Anna and I started getting involved politically, including through political contributions, reflecting support for policies that advance American innovation and constructive dialogue between government and the technology sector,” Brockman wrote.
Alexander Karp, the CEO of data analysis firm Palantir, gave $1 million to MAGA Inc. in December 2024 as Trump was preparing to take office for a second time, filings show.
Palantir has long served as a government contractor, working with a variety of U.S. agencies on issues ranging from tax data to distributing vaccines, but the firm has occupied a prominent — and lucrative — role as the Trump administration pursues its mass deportation campaign.
In April 2025, the firm won a $30 million Immigration and Customs Enforcement contract to deliver an operating system tracking and managing deportations, as well as granting “near real-time visibility” on those who “self-deport.”
Another significant donation came from the CEO of equity firm General Atlantic, who contributed $1.25 million to MAGA Inc. a few days before Trump was inaugurated in January 2025.
The company’s CEO, William Ford, is on the board of TikTok’s Chinese parent company ByteDance, General Atlantic’s website says. Trump spent much of last year helping to negotiate an agreement between ByteDance and a consortium of American investors to spin off TikTok U.S. into its own venture to allay privacy concerns and the potential misuse of users’ data.
ByteDance last month signed a deal to sell its U.S. entity in a joint venture majority-controlled by American investors.
Two other donors to MAGA Inc. had relatives who were facing federal prison when they contributed to the Trump war chest, and those family members later received leniency from the administration, NBC News reported.
Isabela Herrera, the daughter of a Venezuelan-Italian billionaire banker whose father was accused of attempting to bribe the former Puerto Rican governor, donated $2.5 million to MAGA Inc. in December 2024, according to The New York Times and NBC News.
A few months later, the Department of Justice dropped the most serious charges against Herrera’s father and authorized a misdemeanor plea deal.
Following the decision, in July 2025, Herrera donated $1 million to MAGA Inc., according to NBC News, citing recent FEC filings.
A Justice Department spokeswoman told The Times last month that “the decision to settle this case was made through the proper channels and was not influenced by any donation to MAGA Inc.”
Elsewhere, a prominent Republican donor, Elizabeth Fago, made her largest contribution to MAGA Inc. of $1 million in April 2025, NBC News reports. Her son, Paul Walczak, a former nursing home executive who had pleaded guilty to tax crimes, was sentenced to 18 months in prison shortly after the donation.
But he was pardoned by Trump after his mother attended a Mar-a-Lago fundraising dinner, where she reportedly spoke with the president directly. Walczak’s pardon application also cited his mother’s contributions to the president’s campaigns, according to reporting at the time.
A White House spokesperson who talked to The Times anonymously at the time said that Fago's words, rather than her cash, convinced the president to give her son a break.
“He spoke directly to a mother who pleaded for her son, and when you’re talking to a mother pleading for her son, that’s a pretty powerful thing,” the source reportedly said.
A White House official also told The Times that Walczak was “targeted by the Biden administration over his family’s conservative politics.”
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