Netflix Co-Founder Reed Hastings Gives $7 Million to a Pro-Harris PAC The Silicon Valley mogul says it’s the largest donation he’s given to a single candidate. He joins a growing list of tech and financial industry luminaries backing Harris’s presidential campaign.

After becoming the leading candidate for the Democratic nomination for president once President Joe Biden said he’d step aside, Kamala Harris has pulled off some quick — and lucrative — successes, from becoming a social-media hit to raking in a record-breaking $81 million in donations during the first 24 hours of her campaign. Now, news site The Information reports she’s won the financial backing of a tech industry giant — Reed Hastings, the man who steered Netflix from its humble beginnings into a $270-billion-plus mega-company.

Hastings knows a thing or two about leadership — after co-founding Netflix in 1997, he helped the company navigate many dramatic changes, from its startup iteration as a DVD rental outfit through its 2007 transition to a streaming company, and then its global expansion and emergence as an original content creator. Hastings surprised many when he stepped aside as CEO and became executive chairman late last year to allow two other executives that he’d been working with for two years to take over as co-CEOs.

Hastings, it was said, demonstrated a high level of self-awareness — he believed that he wasn’t the best person to lead the company into its next phase of growth. Hastings is also no stranger to critical feedback: In his 2020 book No Rules Rules, he and his co-author explained his stance on encouraging challenging criticisms. “With candor, high performers become outstanding performers,” Hastings wrote, adding “frequent candid feedback exponentially magnifies the speed and effectiveness of your team.”

After Biden’s broadly criticized performance in the presidential debate in late June, Hastings publicly criticized the president for not stepping aside himself. He should do so to “allow a vigorous Democratic leader to beat Trump and keep us safe and prosperous,” he told the New York Times — perhaps suggesting that the Democrats needed to pull off the same kind of succession plan that he’d just accomplished. Hastings, who has learned a thing or two about tapping into the public zeitgeist, was vibing with the U.S. public with this idea: A Pew Research survey in early July showed 7 in 10 Americans wished they could replace Biden on the ballot (and Trump too).

Now that Harris has swiftly won the support of the majority of Democratic delegates and is on a path to become the party’s nominee for president, Hastings hasn’t wasted much time. The Information reported that his donation of $7 million to Harris’s Super PAC was his biggest ever to just a single candidate — though it’s technically small change for a man whose net worth is, per Forbes‘s estimate, $4.6 billion. The idea of donating was reportedly prompted by advice from another tech industry giant — LinkedIn’s co-founder Reid Hoffman, who was among the very early public backers of Harris’s campaign. Hastings told The Information that he felt that “after the depressing debate, we are in the game again.” In a posting on X Hastings said “Congrats to Kamala Harris — now it is time to win.”

Give it some time, and we expect we’ll see plenty of the ensuing election high drama in a Netflix special.