Ethics Commission filings show the Ripple co-founder bankrolling Mayor Daniel Lurie’s charter overhaul and a District 10 candidate, while his company backs a Muni parcel tax.
By Hollis Varga
Chris Larsen, the co-founder of the cryptocurrency company Ripple, has given $2,127,500 to committees in the city’s Nov. 3 election, according to the San Francisco Ethics Commission’s top-contributors table, last updated Oct. 26.
That makes him the second-largest individual donor in the election, behind only the former venture capitalist Michael Moritz, who has reported $3.47 million. Add the $1 million given by his wife, Lyna Lam, and $500,000 from Ripple Labs, and the household and company account for more than $3.6 million in local giving with a week to go.
Forbes put Larsen’s net worth at $8.4 billion in its real-time ranking on Oct. 27, 2026.
Most of the money is behind the mayor
The largest share, $1,487,500, went to Mayor Lurie’s Yes on D, E & F Committee, the campaign for three charter amendments that would reshape how City Hall works. According to Mission Local, Proposition D would quadruple the signature requirement for putting initiatives on the ballot, Proposition E would expand the city administrator’s contracting power and Proposition F would let the mayor fold and merge city departments.
Lam gave that committee a further $1 million. Larsen also gave $100,000 to Clean Up the Charter, the committee backing Proposition A, which makes charter changes affecting city departments and commissions.
His company is in the race too. Ripple Labs Inc. gave $500,000 to Mayor Lurie’s Yes on H Committee, the campaign for a parcel tax to fund Muni operations. The same committee drew $500,000 checks from Visa, Anthropic, OpenAI and an Airbnb-sponsored committee, along with money from transit and building-trades unions.
The Ethics table counts only committees formed mainly for this election. Separately, Mission Local reported that Larsen gave $181,000 to the San Francisco Democratic Party this year, part of what it described as roughly $6 million given by Moritz, Larsen and Lam combined.
The District 10 bet
The most closely watched check went to a supervisor’s race. Larsen has now given $540,000 to an independent committee called From the Neighborhood, for the City, Supporting Theo Ellington, which backs Ellington in District 10. That covers Bayview-Hunters Point, Visitacion Valley, Portola and Dogpatch.
The first $500,000 came on Sept. 3. The San Francisco Standard called it the largest outside contribution ever made to support a candidate for San Francisco supervisor. At the time, Ellington’s own campaign committee had raised roughly $480,000.
In a September interview with Mission Local, Larsen said he was “impressed” by Ellington’s “pragmatism.” He described Ellington as “cut from the same cloth” as Lurie and said he expected him to “work with the mayor and not try to sabotage” him. Asked what he stood to gain, Larsen said: “What do I need? I could be anywhere.” He also cast the Bayview’s turnaround as key to the city’s image. “Was this another example of Bayview being ignored?” he asked.
Ellington, the executive director of the Bayview Opera House, has kept his distance from the money. Independent committees cannot coordinate with the candidates they support. “Outside organizations make their own decisions about how they participate in elections,” he told Mission Local. “They do not speak for me, or our campaign.”
Asked by The Inquirer about the spending, Noah Finneburgh of The Message Department, speaking for Ellington’s campaign, pointed to those earlier public statements. He cited a Mission Local report in which Ellington said the gift would not influence him, and a post on the candidate’s Facebook page.
At a Sept. 30 candidate forum in the Bayview, Ellington signaled that he would support limits on billionaire funding of political action committees in local races. He also said he would back a ban on data centers and would not renew the Police Department’s contract with the license-plate camera company Flock.
What rivals say
Ellington’s opponents have made the money an issue. J.R. Eppler, a small-business attorney, told Mission Local: “Billionaires don’t give gifts. Instead, they make investments and expect returns.” Dion-Jay Brookter, a former chief executive of Young Community Developers, told the Standard the gift raises the question of “whose interests will actually be represented in office.” A fourth candidate, Shawn Richard, called on the committee to redirect the money to the neighborhood.
Aaron Peskin, a former supervisor and longtime critic of big spending in local elections, told the Standard it was the kind of money “people spend to put someone in the U.S. Congress.”
David Ho, a progressive political consultant, told Mission Local that the mayor’s new donor base amounted to a “different type of oligarchy.” He said the new tech money had “drowned out” the city’s old-money political families.
Beyond City Hall
Larsen’s political giving reaches beyond City Hall. According to CalMatters, Larsen and Ripple Labs each gave $5 million to oppose Proposition 40, the proposed tax on California billionaires.
Larsen co-founded Ripple in 2012 and was its chief executive until December 2016. He is now executive chairman. He earlier co-founded the online lender E-Loan and the peer-to-peer lending platform Prosper. Forbes credits him with $409 million in lifetime giving, much of it through Rippleworks, his philanthropic organization.
He has also spoken bluntly about the technology industry his money comes from. “The AI industry has done a spectacularly terrible job at preserving their image,” he told Mission Local, adding that a data-center moratorium could be a “good thing” for the industry.
The mayor’s press office did not respond to a request for comment on Larsen’s role in the charter campaign. Election Day is Nov. 3.
Hollis Varga covers San Francisco’s billionaires and the money behind the city’s politics, philanthropy and real estate, working from campaign filings, foundation tax returns, corporate disclosures and the public record, for the Inquirer’s Billionaires desk. More from Hollis Varga
