A little over a year ago, a collective of Pennsylvania NGOs issued a warning on the Pennsylvania Capital-Star news site: Jeff Yass is arriving on the national scene, and it's a problem for democracy. They wanted to warn against the way in which this local multi-billionaire was using his vast fortune, estimated between 27 and 40 billion dollars – or between 25 and 37 billion euros – to try to influence policies that serve his interests.
A year later, the first part of their prediction came true. The name of Jeff Yass appears more and more in the media, often in the bosom of former President Donald Trump. But not only. As for whether he endangers democracy, the jury is still out.
Fan of TikTok and Truth Social
This billionaire has, in any case, contributed to the improbable reversal of fortune of Donald Trump who is, potentially, richer by almost five billion dollars since the IPO of his social network Truth Social on Tuesday March 26. Jeff Yass was in fact the largest institutional investor in Digital World Acquisition Corp., the financial vehicle which, by merging with Truth Social, allowed the social network to be listed on the stock exchange. His investment fund, Susquehanna International Group (SIG), held nearly $22 million in shares in Digital World Acquisition Corp. in December 2023.
A bet that increased the value of this company before its marriage with Truth Social. SIG denies having made an investment with political connotations, stressing that the fund only seeks to “profit from the market”. But for Donald Trump, who has often complained in recent weeks of having difficulty obtaining money to pay his fines in two legal cases, the stock market success of Truth Social is a big financial boost. He owns around 60% of the social network, which is worth more than $8 billion.
Also read: Truth Social: Donald Trump's surprise financial lifeline?
Jeff Yass also seems associated with another surprise from the chef "made in Donald Trump": the Republican candidate for the 2024 presidential election opposed, on March 11, a law aimed at banning TikTok in the United States. This same Donald Trump had however tried unsuccessfully, in 2020, to push the social network of Chinese origin out of the country while he was president.
This 180-degree turn has confused political commentators. Was Donald Trump seeking revenge on Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook suspected of being hostile to the ex-president and who has everything to gain from seeing one of his rivals banned from the United States? Another element quickly surfaced: a few weeks before his about-face, Donald Trump had met Jeff Yass during a meeting organized by the Club for Growth, one of the most influential American conservative organizations. Clarification: Susquehanna International Group is one of the largest American investors in ByteDance, the Chinese parent company of TikTok.
Jeff Yass was even the first American, with his investment fund, to bet on the Chinese group, in 2012. At the time, TikTok did not even exist yet. Today, SIG owns 15% of ByteDance shares, and Jeff Yass personally owns almost 7%. A law banning TikTok in the United States, where nearly 150 million people use it, would likely cause Jeff Yass to lose billions, assures the Wall Street Journal.
The man who whispers in the ears of racehorses
Donald Trump denied having raised the issue of TikTok during his meeting with Jeff Yass. The multi-billionaire from Pennsylvania, however, has a certain tendency to benefit from his financial largesse to politicians who are most openly opposed to the ban on TikTok, as demonstrated by the Wall Street Journal.
This nationwide activism – he has become the largest donor in the 2024 presidential election according to Reuters calculations – is reminiscent of what he has already done in Pennsylvania.
In this northeastern state, he was accused of using his wealth to prevent politicians supposedly in favor of higher local taxes from being elected. “For years, we have been witnessing in Pennsylvania the spectacle of Jeff Yass taking advantage of the very lax laws on political financing to favor his favorite politicians,” regrets the collective of NGOs which denounces the “Yass threat” in the Pennsylvania Capital-Star .
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At 68, Jeff Yass built his fortune in Pennsylvania, the state where Joe Biden is also from. He started with horses in the 1980s. With friends, they had developed an algorithm to optimize bets. They thus managed to win more than $700,000 in one go, "the largest gain in the history of horse racing in the United States", underlines the investigative journalism site ProPublica in an investigation into Jeff Yass published in June 2022.
The math enthusiast then used the same approach to found SIG, his investment fund specializing in stock market bets boosted by algorithms. He was one of the first of his kind, and he hit the mark: he was one of the few stock marketers to make money during the stock market crash of 1987. Since then, his fortune has only grown .
Very right-wing and very pro-Netanyahu
Jeff Yass doesn't just use his money to support politicians who can protect his financial interests. It is also an ideological weapon for him. He defines himself as libertarian – for a minimal role for the State in the economy – but his electoral donations mainly go to very right-wing politicians, like Donald Trump.
The Club for Growth, of which he is one of the main financiers, thus supported 42 Republican candidates who questioned the results of the 2020 presidential election or openly supported the assault on the Capitol on January 6, 2021, underlines the Guardian.
But Jeff Yass is not an early “Trumpist” and has never officially declared his support for the Republican candidate. Before seeking to set Donald Trump's TikTok records straight, he had financed several of his rivals during the 2024 Republican primary, to the tune of $47 million, underlines the American channel NBC.
This billionaire is not only interested in American politics. Of Jewish faith, he also put his fortune at the service of the very right-wing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. More precisely, he is one of the main financiers of the Kohelet Policy Forum, an ultra-conservative Israeli think tank, as France 24 had already reported in February 2023. Thus, if Jeff Yass could still appear a few years ago as a kingmaker in Pennsylvania, it seems he has decided to think much bigger.
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