Jeff Yass

Jeff Yass may be the most conflicted mega-donor in America — and in a field this crowded, that's saying something. The co-founder of Susquehanna International Group, one of the world's largest quantitative trading firms, holds approximately a 15% stake in ByteDance, TikTok's parent company, worth an estimated $33-40 billion. While donating $90 million to politicians in 2024, he simultaneously lobbied against the TikTok ban — the single clearest case in modern American politics of using political donations to protect a personal financial interest worth tens of billions of dollars. Born in 1959 in Stony Brook, New York, Yass studied economics at SUNY Binghamton and became obsessed with gambling theory and probability. He applied these skills to financial markets, co-founding Susquehanna International Group in 1987 with several gambling buddies. SIG became a powerhouse in options trading, market-making, and quantitative strategies. The firm was also an early investor in ByteDance, the Chinese tech company that created TikTok — and that investment has become the most valuable in SIG's history. For years, Yass was primarily known as a libertarian mega-donor focused on school choice. He has spent more on school voucher campaigns than perhaps any individual in America, funding ballot measures and candidates across multiple states. His Club for Growth donations supported low-tax, free-market candidates regardless of party. He was philosophically libertarian: pro-market, pro-school choice, and anti-regulation. Then TikTok changed everything. In 2023, bipartisan legislation emerged to force ByteDance to sell TikTok or face a U.S. ban. Yass's $33 billion ByteDance stake was suddenly at risk. His political giving took on a new urgency and a new target: anyone who might protect TikTok. In March 2024, Yass met with Trump at a Club for Growth event. Before the meeting, Trump had supported banning TikTok. After the meeting, Trump reversed his position, publicly opposing a TikTok ban. The correlation between Yass's donations and Trump's reversal on TikTok was immediately noted by watchdog groups and media outlets. In 2025, Yass donated an additional $16 million to MAGA Inc. as Trump repeatedly delayed the TikTok ban's enforcement. SIG was eventually given a seat on the board of the new TikTok U.S. entity as part of the spinoff deal — placing Yass's firm at the center of the very transaction his political spending helped shape. The school choice spending, while genuine, also serves a strategic purpose: it builds political relationships and infrastructure in states where Yass needs allies. His $34 million in school voucher spending in 2024 created goodwill with Republican legislators who also had the power to block TikTok restrictions. What makes Yass's case so stark is the math. At $90 million in political donations and a $33 billion ByteDance stake at risk, every dollar spent on politics was protecting approximately $366 in personal wealth. It is the most efficient self-interested political spending in American history.