JD Vance’s investments reveal potential contradictions between the political persona he has sought to project, his history as a venture capitalist and Peter Thiel acolyte, and his status as a hard-edged tribune of the so-called “new right”.
Companies he has invested in include a firm that carries out medical testing of therapies that may include stem cells in scientific research to tech firms with records of harvesting data. Vance and some of the people behind the various firms he is involved with also exhibit an obsession with references to the mythology around The Lord of the Rings’ fantasy world.
The revelations come in part from an analysis of his financial disclosures to the Senate ethics committee since 2022, first as a Senate candidate and then as a junior senator for Ohio. The Guardian’s reporting also drew on other public records and open source materials.
The most recent disclosure, which covers until the end of 2022, also showcases the peculiar preoccupations that Vance as an investor shared with a Thiel-adjacent network of rightwing Silicon Valley venture capitalists who later spent millions supporting Vance’s candidacy to the Senate in 2022.
Joe Lowndes, a political science professor at Hunter College and the author of several books on the American political right, said: “Vance has been a chameleon his whole life – that’s how he described himself in his autobiography.
“He has no core, and seems to have been influenced by a series of strong personalities, from Amy Chua, to Peter Thiel, to Trump.”
The Guardian contacted Vance’s Senate office and a spokesperson for the Trump and Vance campaign for comment on this reporting but received no response.
Biotech controversies
Several Vance investments involve cutting-edge biotech startups, whose research and commercial activities may conflict with Vance’s stated Catholic religious beliefs, and his advocacy of positions like total abortion bans.
Perhaps the most controversial of these to date is AmplifyBio, a startup founded in 2021 to develop “next generation cell and gene therapies”.
According to his disclosures, between his investment company, Narya Capital, and his own personal holdings, Vance has between $51,000 and $115,000 invested in the company. (In ethics declarations, senators and Senate candidates declare investments as being within particular ranges, rather than declaring precise figures.)
In 2022, Rolling Stone reported that the company, whose core business is testing drugs and therapies developed by other companies, did not take any view on whether or not its clients had used embryonic stem cells in the development of new therapies.
The Guardian contacted AmplifyBio to clarify that this was still its position on embryonic stem cells, and to ask for comment on other aspects of this reporting, but received no response. An animal welfare statement on the company website says that it is “accredited and trusted for ethical best practices”.
Embryonic stem cell lines, many of which are originally developed from embryos left over from IVF procedures, are commonly used in genetic and biological research. The Catholic church opposes research using embryonic stem cells since it holds that life begins at conception. Vance converted to Catholicism in 2018, and in 2022 said on a podcast that he “would like abortion to be illegal nationally”.
The Guardian asked about this apparent contradiction in its outreach to the Vance campaign but got no response.
Notwithstanding Vance’s beliefs, AmplifyBio has also been criticized over its use of primates in lab tests.
In the same 2022 reporting, Rolling Stone reported that AmplifyBio had not only tested toxic materials on animals, including macaque monkeys, but lab accidents had led to monkeys being trapped in lab equipment, and some receiving burns on their genitals.
Subsequent academic publications reviewed by the Guardian suggest that AmplifyBio is still using primates in lethal experiments. A 2023 paper, for example, details how 24 macaques were injected at AmplifyBio’s facility with a pathogenic bacterium to test the efficacy of an antibiotic. While all the animals treated with the antibiotic survived, seven who were instead injected with a saline solution died.
A 2023 report on “nonhuman primate use” in National Institutes of Health-supported research indicates that in 2021, AmplifyBio “used” 68 such primates, though none were in residence at the time of the study.
A 2022 paper co-authored by David F Lee, a Harvard University biochemist, documented how the authors in part “amplified and sequenced 748 single cells from the human embryonic kidney HEK293T cell line”, which is frequently used in biomedical research.
At the time of publication, in his affiliations Lee gave his “current address” as “Kriya Therapeutics, Redwood City, CA”, another biotech startup Vance is invested in.
Ready to Rumble
Separate Vance investments suggest a preparedness to mix investments with ideology, and to effectively finance culture war platforms.
Vance’s firm, Narya Capital, is one of the top 10 investors in the video platform Rumble, and reportedly its initial purchase of 7m shares in 2022 gave it a seat on the board. According to his disclosure statement, Vance has invested a total of between $115,000 and $200,000 in the company.
The Guardian previously reported that Rumble came to prominence as a haven for rightwing and conspiracy-minded users during 2020, when more mainstream platforms were cracking down on those promoting falsehoods about Covid-19, the 2020 election or elaborate far-right conspiracy narratives such as QAnon.
The platform subsequently leaned into its role as an oasis for the “canceled” by promoting and even sponsoring the likes of conspiracy guru and accused sexual harasser Russell Brand, manosphere influencer and accused sex trafficker Andrew Tate and antisemitic conspiracy broadcaster Stew Peters.
TPM recently reported on various strands of extremist content on the site, including a lively stream of content promoting the conspiracy theory that asserts that hidden powers are plotting to carry out “white genocide” on populations in Europe and its settler colonies including the United States.
The Guardian’s review of the site showed that many of the more popular videos on “white genocide” were published by Peters, the antisemitic conspiracy theorist who runs one of the more popular political channels on the site.
At the time of reporting, another popular channel associated with Steve Bannon’s War Room podcast was running a livestreamed monologue by Royce White, a Bannon protege and former professional athlete, in which he was offering support for Donald Trump’s recent claim that Kamala Harris is not Black.
White, who like Harris is African American, is now running as the endorsed Republican candidate for a US Senate seat in Minnesota. He has reportedly fallen behind on court-mandated child support payments at least half a dozen times since 2020; has publicly canvassed the possibility that wildfires on Maui were started by “advanced weapons”; and has repeatedly advanced conspiracy theories about Jews, including apparent attempts to minimize the Holocaust.
Meanwhile, on Rumble’s front page, the “Live” section highlighting currently running streams was led by a link to a stream by notorious white nationalist Nick Fuentes.
There are indications that Vance has partially divested from the video platform.
SEC records indicate that Narya sold 3.6m Class A rumble shares last 18 September, for a windfall of almost $25m. The sale took place when Rumble’s share price was just over $7; the stock has spent much of the last year well below that price, sinking as low as $3.33 in January, and selling for around $6.15 at the time of reporting.
Meanwhile, every earnings report since Narya divested itself of part of its holding has showed a contraction, according to SEC reports and financial portals. A fresh earnings call is due on 12 August.
On Tuesday, Rumble joined Elon Musk’s Twitter/X in filing a lawsuit against bodies representing advertisers who have avoided or abandoned the platforms in the face of declining or absent content moderation.
Anduril, ‘flame of the west’
Another of Vance’s investments, the defense and security contractor Anduril Industries, showcases both the peculiar preoccupation with The Lord of the Rings in the network around venture capitalist, rightwing ideologue and intermittently active political donor Peter Thiel.
Vance’s own investment partnership, Narya, shares a name with one of the rings of power in JRR Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. For two years from 2016, Vance worked alongside his mentor Thiel at Mithril Capital, itself named after a precious metal in The Lord of the Rings. Palantir, the surveillance company founded by Thiel, is named after a magical seeing stone in the books.
Another Lord of the Rings reference is contained in the name of the defense startup Anduril Industries, which shares its name with a magic sword in the series.
In the fictional Elvish language of the story, “Anduril” translates to “flame of the west”, which the company’s co-founder Palmer Luckey has connected with the company’s self-appointed mission to “save western civilization” through weapons manufacturing.
For his part, Vance has reportedly named Tolkien as his favorite author; one of his friends, the conservative writer Rod Dreher, told Politico last month in connection with Tolkien that Vance is “is thinking broadly about how all must join in the great struggle against darkness”.
Fantasy aside, Vance’s ethics declaration indicates that he has between $1,000 and $15,000 invested in the defense startup, which has raised $3.7bn in 10 funding rounds to date, according to media reports and startup reporting service Crunchbase.
Along with Vance’s filings, Anduril’s finances showcase Thiel’s network in pursuit of his long-held goal to disrupt the bureaucratized world of defense procurement.
Anduril’s lead investors include Thiel’s Founders Fund, along with venture capital firms Andreessen-Horowitz and 8VC. Andreessen-Horowitz co-founders Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz and 8VC’s Joe Lonsdale have been among the leaders of a sharp right turn from elements of the tech sector in recent months, which has seen them offering full-throated support of the Trump-Vance ticket, along with gung-ho participation in culture war battles. Reportedly, Thiel and Andreessen previously provided capital for Vance’s own venture fund when it was founded in 2019.
In its most recent funding round, Founders Fund was reportedly key to Anduril raising a further $1.5bn in funding at a valuation of $14bn.
Anduril makes software and hardware, with a focus on unmanned vehicles and autonomous systems. Controversial applications of its technology include a so-called “virtual border wall” of autonomous sentry towers with significant buy-in from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
Nevertheless, Anduril has received more than $1bn in government contracts, according to public records and the contract monitoring site GovTribe. Major clients include the DHS, with $313m worth of contracts, and Department of Defense agencies including the Special Operations Command ($288m), the US Air Force ($96m) and the Department of the Navy ($38m).
Anduril has also sold technology to overseas buyers such as the Royal Australian Navy, and some of the company’s weapons are also reportedly in use in the war in Ukraine. Recent NPR reporting hinted at discrepancies between the claims made for autonomous systems like Anduril’s and the technologies’ on-the-ground performance.
Luckey, Anduril’s co-founder and CEO, first came to prominence as the founder of Oculus VR and the designer of Oculus Rift, a virtual reality headset that kickstarted the current iteration of VR. Oculus VR and its technologies were acquired by Facebook in 2014, and Luckey worked for the social media giant until 2017. His departure came after reports that he had funded a pro-Trump social media influence operation.
Along with the likes of Thiel, Andreessen and David Sacks – the venture capitalist who took to the stage at last month’s Republican national convention – Luckey has been an outspoken Trump supporter, and in June he hosted one of two Trump fundraisers aimed at tech entrepreneurs at his home in Orange county.
Other government contractors Vance has invested in according to his disclosures include Atlas Space Operations, Atomos Nuclear and Space, and Aurora Insights.
Rise of the Rest
Through Narya, another fund he participated in called Rise of the Rest Seed Fund, and his own personal ventures, Vance has made other investments that have yielded controversy.
Vance has $15,000-$50,000 invested in Hallow, a Catholic prayer app. The app reportedly collects significant user data, which is at odds with Vance’s previous attacks on Silicon Valley firms for similar practices.
Hallow has also faced criticism for platforming “fringe elements” on the Catholic right, including actor Jim Caviezel, who spoke at two QAnon conferences in 2021, and Lila Rose, the leader of an anti-abortion group that has picketed pharmacies that sell abortion medications.
At least one of his investments spectacularly flamed out. Appharvest, a startup focused on greenhouse farming which launched in 2018, faced lawsuits amid accusations of misleading investors, criticism over its alleged mistreatment of its Kentuckian blue-collar workforce and concerns over chronic operational issues.
A year ago, after at one point being valued at more than $1bn, AppHarvest filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.
According to his disclosures, Vance had up to $15,000 invested in the firm.
Vance is due to file fresh financial disclosures this month after seeking an extension on the filings, which were due in April.
Lowndes, the political scientist, said that “for a guy who sells himself as having an inviolable moral code and as the most authentic American, it’s striking that so many have perceived him as so inauthentic”.
• This article was amended on 8 August 2024 to correct that many embryonic stem cell lines are originally developed from embryos, not fetuses as was originally written. In addition, HEK293T is not an embryonic stem cell line as an earlier version said.
