Chris Larsen is the Latest Leftist Mega-Donor You've Never Heard Of

A private network of security cameras blanketing a major city, $100 million to a presidential candidate’s super PAC, and an experiment to block out the sun. What do these have in common? They were all made possible by dark money from one elite billionaire—and no, he's not Montgomery Burns.

Chris Larsen, a little-known wealthy San Francisco tech executive and one of the wealthiest people in the world today, has leveraged his wealth to support a variety of progressive causes. It's quietly transformed him into a major donor to Democratic politicians from coast to coast.

The native San Franciscan has had a long and successful career as an entrepreneur, launching three major startups. In the 1990s Larsen quit his job as a mortgage lender and co-founded E-Loan, one of the first online mortgage lenders. Its success made Larsen a millionaire following E-Loan's initial public offering (IPO), giving Larsen the money and platform to begin influencing public policy.

Changing Lending Laws

Larsen was among the first in Silicon Valley to begin hiring lobbyists to push for changes in Washington.

In 2000, E-Loan made waves when it attempted to show people their credit scores, leading to Equifax cutting off E-Loan from credit data. Months later, E-Loan officials, including Larsen, joined a press conference in D.C. introducing legislation to force disclosure of credit scores. Today, of course, we can all get a free copy of our credit reports annually and numerous banks and other services will provide you with your credit score.

Following the sale of E-Loan, Larsen started a peer-to-peer lending startup, allowing people to directly loan money to other people without the bank as a middleman (or pesky limitations like FDIC protections). The platform, named Prosper, found early success as borrowers with bad credit scores flocked to it. Perhaps that explains why Sen. Elizabeth Warren called it a "great idea." Larsen himself, send Prosper was benefiting from the 2008 credit crunch. In May 2008, Prosper, who’s goal was to cut out the banks from the lending process, launched a partnership with a Utah based bank. The reason was to get around state laws limiting interest rates.

During his time at Prosper, Larsen was first introduced to his most persistent foe: the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). In October 2007, Prosper sought regulatory approval for a secondary trading market to enable lenders to resell their loans. Prosper was eventually forced to halt lending for several months while their request inched through the process. Prosper finally won SEC approval for a secondary market in July 2009.

The encounter with SEC regulators must've left a bad taste in Prosper and Larsen’s mouths, because between the April 2009 and October 2010, Prosper spent between $60,000 and $80,000 each quarter lobbying the federal government. A Larsen-founded association spent tens of thousands in additional lobbying dollars. Prosper and Larsen pushed for Congress to establish the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) and put them in charge of regulating platforms like Prosper.

Prosper took the position that what they were doing was too simple to be regulated like a Wall Street securities product, since people were merely lending money, not investing. However, as Ron Lieber noted in the New York Times, most lenders on Prosper tended to throw small amounts of money into dozens of loans, ending up with a de facto portfolio resembling a new asset class. After the CPFB was established, a Prosper corporate director, Raj Date, was hired by the CFPB as a senior adviser to Elizabeth Warren.

However, Prosper’s goal of democratizing the personal borrowing market was running headfirst into economic reality. They dropped their vaunted eBay-style auction model, meant to bring down interest rates by getting lenders to bid on loans, after discovering many borrowers did not want to wait and preferred to get funds as quickly as possible. Next, Prosper dropped its high-risk borrowers, a decision undoubtedly due to one-third of all loans in their first three years going bad. Six months later, however, Prosper brought back high-risk borrowers, citing investor demand for high interest rate, high-risk borrowers.

Larsen stepped aside as CEO of Prosper in 2012; shortly after he founded Ripple, a peer-to-peer payment and lending system built around the company's XRP cryptocurrency. Ripple’s oft-stated goal has been to replace the existing process of transferring money between banks with a faster public ledger-based system built on cryptocurrency.

In January 2017, Larsen stepped aside as the CEO of Ripple, moving to the executive chairman role. Rising crypto prices in 2018, briefly made Larsen the 5th-wealthiest person in the world.

Ripple has for years faced a persist challenge: Getting people to use it as a currency and not as a speculative investment. Larsen on numerous occasions leveraged his personal financial wealth to jumpstart Ripple as a widespread currency. Both Larsen and Ripple began making significant contributions to nonprofit organizations in XRP, including a $25 million contribution to San Francisco State University, the alma matter of both Larsen and his wife Lyna Lam. (The Business School at SFSU is now the Lam Family College of Business.)

In September 2018, a Ripple-backed coalition of fintech firms announced they would begin partially paying their lobbyists in XRP. Ripple also backed a number of high-profile contributions made by celebrities.

Ripple, however, once again brought Larsen into federal regulators' crosshairs. In May 2015, the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network fined Ripple Labs over $700,000 for violations of anti-money laundering laws. Larsen’s successor as Ripple CEO, Brad Garlinghouse, later joked that the fine got banks to recognize them as a member of the club. In December 2020, the SEC sued Ripple, Larsen, and Garlinghouse. Following the filings, cryptocurrency market Coinbase suspended trading in XRP.

The SEC argued Ripple’s sales of XRP constitutes sales of unregistered securities. Ripple’s chief counsel accused the SEC of picking winners and loser. The lawsuit set off a series of back-and-forth legal filings with the SEC demanding millions of Slack messages and meeting videos from Ripple and Ripple demanding internal SEC communications. Ripple’s CEO at one point literally threatened to leave the country if the SEC prevailed.

While the lawsuits against Larsen and Garlinghouse were dropped, in 2023, a federal judge ruled Ripple had violated federal securities laws when selling XRP to institutional investors. Ripple was ordered to pay over $125 million in penalties. The SEC is still appealing the judgement ending the cases against Larsen and Garlinghouse.

Democrat Donor

Larsen launched into political activism at nearly the same time he became a millionaire. In August 2000, Larsen helped establish what was then named "PAC.com," which supports centrist Democrats and was funded with pre-IPO or recent IPO stock by its supporters. Larsen also spent 2000 backing Al Gore’s presidential campaign.

Larsen’s first experience with spending megabucks on politics came in 2002 as the champion of a California consumer privacy bill to limit the commercial use of consumer data. Concerned about yet another possible defeat, Larsen formed "Californians for Privacy Now" and set aside $1 million in funding for a new ballot measure. Larsen’s group got as far drafting a measure and collecting signatures before business groups acquiesced and the legislature passed his preferred bill. Less than a month later, Larsen funded ads in D.C. newspapers opposing federal legislation limiting personal privacy.

In 2004, Larsen said Al Gore’s 2000 defeat was humiliating for Silicon Valley. That must explain why Larsen decided to hitch his wagon to John Kerry. Larsen was even reported as potentially hitting the campaign trail for Kerry during the final push.

In 2006, Larsen backed another loser, giving nearly $70,000 to his former teacher: Steve Westly’s campaign for governor of California.

In 2020, amidst his new legal fight with the SEC, Larsen dropped $200,000 for Biden’s inaugural committee.

Larsen’s financial influence has been felt in state politics as well. Larsen contributed $100,000 to Michigan Sec. of State Jocelyn Benson’s (D) campaign and contributed $1 million to Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro’s (D) campaign in 2022. Larsen later lobbied for Shapiro to be Kamala Harris’ running mate in the 2024 presidential election.

Larsen was a major supporter of Kamala Harris in 2024. Larsen hosted a fundraiser for her and contributed over $11 million in XRP cryptocurrency to Future Forward, the primary super PAC supporting Harris’ campaign. Given the Biden/Harris administration’s litigation against Ripple, the crypto community was understandably deeply unhappy with Larsen’s contributions. Larsen said he wanted Harris to quell what he described as the government’s "anti-business stand."

Larsen’s politics and business interests have frequently mixed. Prosper’s drive to replace banks as consumer lenders would certainly explain why Prosper fundraised to feed Occupy Wall Street protesters.

Larsen’s greatest political influence has been in his hometown of San Francisco. Larsen was an early backer of failed San Francisco mayor London Breed, contributing $49,000 to her mayoral campaign in 2018. Larsen was also quite fond of disgraced former District Attorney Chesa Boudin, a Soros-backed prosecutor. In 2022, Larsen ended up being the top donor to the committee defending Boudin against his recall, donating $100,000. San Franciscans ended up voting by nearly 20% to recall Boudin.

Larsen himself says Big Tech "messed up" San Francisco, which must explain why he’s handed out so much money trying to transform San Francisco. In October 2023, a Larsen backed group launched a multi-million-dollar propaganda effort to boost San Francisco’s image. Larsen went also spent lavishly on a pro-San Francisco party at the 2024 DNC.  

In 2021, Larsen and his wife launched the Larsen Lam Climate Change Foundation. The foundation has funded numerous climate change organizations including the Drive Electric Campaign; the Climate + Clean Energy Equity Fund which fights "disinformation from incumbent industries"; and Down Ballot Climate Partners, which is an "early-stage political startup" that helps "invest in local elections with outsized climate and environmental justice impact."

The foundation was also a major contributor to the project to geoengineer the brightness of the sun by using clouds to block more sunlight—a project so bizarre, even the ultraliberal Alameda City Council voted to end the deny project approval. Approval, it turns out, the project organizers had claimed they did not need, catching city officials quite by surprise upon reading it in the New York Times.

Larsen has occasionally contributed to Republicans. Generally, these recipients either have ties to Silicon Valley as in the case of failed Illinois gubernatorial candidate Jesse Sullivan, are in key industry oversight roles such as former Rep. Patrick McHenry, or are challenging incumbents hostile to the crypto industry such as John Deaton, who mounted a longshot campaign against Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren.

Larsen has occasionally flirted with hypocrisy in his political contributions. In the late 2010s, after loudly urging the passage of consumer privacy legislation, Larsen began funding the installation of a vast network of privately owned surveillance cameras in San Francisco. In particular, a $700,000 contribution for cameras in the Castro District, elicited objections from local LGBTQ clubs who cited a long history of police discrimination and abuse.

In June 2020, the San Francisco Business Times reported police were using the network on a daily basis. Beginning in 2022, the SFPD gained real-time access to the camera network. The camera’s management company may have given access to federal agents as well, but refused to confirm or deny doing so. In November 2023, Larsen said he had given about $4.5 million in funding for security cameras.

In 2022, Larsen gave $100,000 to each of the SFPD’s 10 precincts. In 2023, Larsen contributed $250,000 to help pass Proposition E in San Francisco, which expanded the power of the SFPD and weakened the oversight powers of the Police Commission.

Larsen’s history makes it clear that he’s happy to throw his money behind liberal politicians and left-wing causes… until it becomes personally inconvenient. His business becomes the target of federal regulators, and suddenly Larsen's cutting checks to congressional Republicans who happen to sit on financial oversight committees. Larsen thinks Big Tech messed up San Francisco, so his answer is to spend the wealth he made in the tech industry to fix the problem. His home gets broken into—so out comes the funding for a measure to give cops more power.

Larsen will undoubtedly continue to throw his wealth behind backing Democrats for the foreseeable future. If anything gets him to stop it will not be running out of money, but either candidates wanting real dollars instead of crypto or if candidates decide that taking money from someone who thinks they’re above federal regulations is a bad look.

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