Vice President-elect JD Vance, in a role that he’s likely to repeat with frequency in the years ahead, hosted a top-dollar fundraiser that attracted some of the leading figures and donors in President-elect Trump’s political orbit.
The $250,000-a-plate fundraiser, which was confirmed to Fox News by a source familiar with the details, was held Wednesday at Le Bilboquet, a French restaurant in Palm Beach, Florida, located just a few miles from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club, which has long served as the former and future president’s political headquarters.
Among those in attendance was the president-elect’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., who is a top friend and political ally of Vance, and who pushed hard last summer for the elder Trump to name Vance, then the junior senator from Ohio, as his running mate on the 2024 Republican Party’s national ticket.
A number of Trump mega donors, including billionaire investor John Paulson and tech entrepreneur David Sacks, as well as tech and cryptocurrency titans, also attended, according to the source.
The money hauled in at the fundraiser, which will likely top seven figures, will go toward MAGA Inc., the top super PAC that supported Trump during his two-year campaign to win back the White House in 2024.
With Trump term-limited and prevented from running again for re-election in 2028, Vance is seen as the heir-apparent to the president-elect’s America First movement and MAGA world of devout supporters. He will likely be considered the frontrunner when the next GOP presidential nomination race formally kicks off following the 2026 midterm elections.
Hosting and headlining top dollar fundraisers that attract the leading donors in Trump’s political orbit will likely enhance Vance’s position as the politician best equipped to carry on the president-elect’s legacy in 2028.
Politico was first to report news of the Vance fundraiser.
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Insight Partners has closed on $12 billion for its newest set of funds.
Insight Partners
Insight Partners has raised $12.5 billion for new software investments as the tech market heats up.
The new funds mark the largest raise by a VC firm in over two years, per PitchBook data.
Insight investors say they expect a higher caliber of startups to show up for funding this year.
As more startups go to fundraise to top off their bank accounts, Insight Partners is leaning into the opportunity with billions in new cash for its software investments.
Insight has closed on $12.5 billion for its newest set of funds, Business Insider has learned. The sum is little more than half the size of its previous fundraise of $20 billion in 2022 — a big step down that Insight managing director Ryan Hinkle says is indicative of a "great reset" in tech investing over the last several years.
The firm will allocate the new funds across several different categories: its 13th flagship fund, buyout investments, and an opportunities fund, which provides later-stage companies with financing that combines debt and equity features. Insight declined to share the exact financial breakdown of funds.
Insight had initially set out to raise $20 billion for this set of funds, The Financial Times reported last year. The firm lowered its target as investors in venture capital funds broadly backed off the asset class, spooked by plunging tech stock prices, geopolitical chaos, and recession fears. Household names like Tiger Global and TCV have also switched up strategies and closed funds below their targets in recent years.
Insight's $12.5 billion haul is still an impressive get in a market that's limping back to normalcy. According to PitchBook data, the new funds mark the largest sum raised by a venture capital firm in over two years. In 2024, General Catalyst raked in $8 billion in fresh capital, while Andreessen Howoritz's newest fundraise topped $7.2 billion.
Insight invests in companies from the seed round to the IPO and focuses on categories powered by software, such as healthcare, cybersecurity, data, and the future of work. The firm employs about 485 people, including a hundred investment professionals — a massive dragnet for sourcing and closing deals. Early investments include Twitter, Alibaba, Shopify, and, more recently, buzzy AI startups like Jasper, Wiz, and Writer.
Insight returned over $8 billion to the firm's own investors last year out of profits from exits in the portfolio, according to the firm. Among them, Salesforce bought Own, a data management provider, for $1.9 billion, and Mastercard purchased the threat intelligence company Recorded Future from Insight for over $2 billion.
Insight has gassed up the tank as investors widely expect funding for startups to rebound. In late 2022, many founders saw the writing on the wall and cut spending to stretch their cash reserves further. Fewer founders went out to fundraise in an investor-friendly market. Two and a half years later, some of those same founders are now electing to raise money again in order to lean into risk and spend to grow. Hinkle said Insight is eagerly awaiting those firms.
"The better the income statement and performance of these companies, the less likely they have been raising capital the past two and a half years," said Hinkle, noting he was generalizing.
"This is my expectation, at least, that the batch of companies that hasn't raised since 2021, they're either thinking about an exit, which is good because we can buy those companies, or they're thinking about raising capital again, which is good because we can provide the capital," Hinkle said. Either way, he said, Insight has a product for them.
Praveen Akkiraju, a managing director at Insight, had another reason to feel optimistic. Software spending cooled off in the downturn, but more businesses are planning to increase their tech budgets to capture the efficiencies that artificial intelligence can provide. Recent leaps in the field, such as the application of "agents" and the shrinking cost of computing, have also amplified their interest. This is good news for software companies that sell into the enterprise market.
"Every company cares about AI. It doesn't matter if you're legacy software, hardware, transportation, construction, or you're an electrician," Akkiraju said. "That's what's unique about this. It's enabling tech that's going to fundamentally lift the entire ecosystem."
Hinkle also offered a caveat to his funding outlook. He doesn't expect startups to come to market for funding in the same numbers as they did in 2021. Dealmaking will remain subdued, he said. Hinkle put it this way: After weeks of freezing temperatures in New York, 42 degrees and sun can feel downright tropical. But it's still frigid. And the tech winter hasn't thawed yet.
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FIRST ON FOX: Longtime Democrat fundraiser and Kamala Harris critic Lindy Li was named this month to President-elect Donald Trump’s inaugural fundraising committee, an about-face that she says has been met with overwhelming support from donors, including from some longtime contributors to the Democratic Party vying to get a spot at the table.
Li’s appointment to the Trump fundraising committee was previewed exclusively to Fox News Digital. It comes just weeks after Li announced her decision to leave the Democratic Party last month, citing what she described as its broader culture of finger-pointing, vitriol and blame in the aftermath of the 2024 elections.
Li herself endured a torrent of criticism and calls to exit the party after she criticized certain spending decisions made by Harris's campaign, despite having raised millions on its behalf and donating several Philadelphia-area buildings to the campaign. She in turn voiced concerns about party leadership "permitting no dissent, no criticism" and failing to learn from their wide losses in the House, Senate and presidential elections.
For Li, her departure from the DNC's national fundraising committee has been an eye-opening one. She told Fox News in an interview this week that she was approved as a member of Trump's inaugural fundraising committee just three days before many of the events reached capacity, forcing the committee to block access, if only for the near-term, in hopes of securing a bigger venue.
"The demand has just been unprecedented," Li said of the response from donors. "Honestly, Biden and Harris never had this issue. They never had to turn people away."
Fox News Digital was told that donors offering as much as $1 million to the inaugural committee have been turned away due to space limitations, as first reported by the New York Times. Since then, the inaugural committee said they are working to find a bigger location for some of the events in order to meet the intense and growing demand.
To date, Trump's inaugural committee has raised a record-shattering $170 million in donations, with proceeds used to fund both the inauguration weekend and longer-term projects, such as a presidential library.
For donors, their contribution earns them access to an inauguration weekend agenda of highly exclusive VIP events before the Inauguration Day ceremony, including intimate dinners, black-tie galas and sit-downs with Cabinet nominees. It's an opportunity to make inroads and gain influence in an incoming administration.
And ahead of Trump's second term, many are shelling out big-time to do so.
Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman are all among the tech executives who announced within the past month that they plan to donate at least $1 million to Trump's inaugural fund.
For Li, a prominent fundraiser whose experience is largely rooted in the Democrat world, pivoting to raising money for Trump's inauguration has been easier than expected.
Li formerly served as a member of the DNC’s national fundraising committee, a membership that requires raising "millions of dollars" on behalf of Democrat candidates.
Still, she said, the inaugural committee donations and enthusiasm surrounding them feels unprecedented.
"I've never seen anything like this," Li said in an interview of the funding raised, which could roughly triple the amount raised by Biden in 2021 and exceeds Trump's first inaugural committee, which raised roughly $117 million.
The committee is expecting donations to climb higher to upwards of $200 million, according to estimates shared with Fox News Digital.
Asked whether it was difficult to build out a base of Republican donors less than a month after leaving the Democratic Party, Li told Fox News that she is dealing with many of the same financial contributors.
"These are Democratic donors," she said.
While Li noted they aren't among the most liberal Democrat donors she has worked with, "They're still donating," she said.
"They're still so eager and willing to come to the table."
Many, she said, share in the belief that Trump has been "great for the business community" and hope to build on that in future conversations with the administration.
And even donors who have been wait-listed or turned down from attending the VIP events during the inaugural weekend due to the lack of space have expressed interest in working with the administration in the future.
Just yesterday, she said, a donor noted, "'You know, even if we can't can't come this time, please let us know the next time that we can show our support.'"
The reception as a whole has been "overwhelmingly positive," Li said of the response from donors. "The enthusiasm is just through the stratosphere."
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