# Jeff Yass **Jeffrey Steven Yass** (b. July 1958) is the **co-founder and managing director of [[Susquehanna International Group]] (SIG)** — the Bala Cynwyd, Pennsylvania-based quantitative trading and market-making firm — and **the largest individual political donor in the 2024 U.S. election cycle**. As of Forbes' 2026 World's Billionaires list he ranks **No. 28 globally with an estimated net worth of $67.4 billion**, up from $27.6 billion in April 2024 — a roughly $40 billion gain in under two years driven primarily by the appreciation of SIG's pre-IPO stake in **[[ByteDance]]**, the Chinese parent company of **[[TikTok]]**. Yass is a registered Libertarian, a decades-long trustee of the **[[Cato Institute]]**, and the dominant single funder of the **[[Club for Growth]]** ecosystem and the Pennsylvania school-voucher movement. His 2024-2026 political giving — roughly **$100 million in the 2024 federal cycle**, $16 million to Trump-aligned [[MAGA Inc.]] in the first half of 2025 alone, $10 million to [[Vivek Ramaswamy]]'s Ohio gubernatorial super PAC, $2.5 million+ to the White House ballroom renovation, and at least $35 million in Pennsylvania state races in 2024 — has made Yass one of the central nodes in the contemporary Republican donor class, with a uniquely visible **personal financial stake** in a single Trump-administration policy decision: whether or not to enforce the TikTok divestment law. Yass matters for the KB for four reasons. First, he is the **single largest school-choice / voucher funder in the United States** — by his own December 2025 *Washington Post* admission, school vouchers are the prime motivation behind his political spending operation, and the Pennsylvania-based PAC architecture he funds (Students First PAC, the Commonwealth Children's Choice Fund, the [[Commonwealth Leaders Fund]], all linked to operative [[Matt Brouillette]]) has become the playbook for how a single donor can dominate state-level education policy. Second, his **TikTok / ByteDance position** turned a routine megadonor into a **direct channel of foreign-business influence into U.S. national-security policymaking**: Trump's March 2024 reversal on the TikTok ban came within days of meeting Yass at a [[Club for Growth]] retreat, and Trump's repeated 2025 executive-order delays of the ByteDance divestment deadline have coincided with record Yass donations to MAGA Inc. and other Trump-aligned vehicles. Third, his **trajectory from anti-Trump 2024 primary funder to dominant 2025-2026 Trump-aligned donor** illustrates the standard accommodation arc of the Republican donor class — but compressed into 18 months and motivated by an unusually transparent set of personal financial and ideological interests. Fourth, his **Pennsylvania state-level operation** — culminating in the failed 2025 attempt to oust three Democratic justices from the Pennsylvania Supreme Court via the retention election — is one of the most aggressive billionaire-driven attempts to capture a state judiciary in the post-*[[Citizens United v. FEC]]* era. ## Background - Born July 1958, New York City; the son of two accountants - BS in mathematics and economics, **SUNY Binghamton**; MBA studies at NYU Stern (incomplete — left for trading) - Spent late 1970s as a **professional gambler** — poker in Las Vegas, horse-race betting — alongside several future SIG co-founders he met at college - Sponsored for a seat on the Philadelphia Stock Exchange by hedge-fund manager Israel Englander; began trading options on the PHLX floor in the early 1980s - **Co-founded Susquehanna International Group in 1987** with five college and trading-floor friends (Eric Brooks, Arthur Dantchik, Andrew Frost, Joel Greenberg, and Steve Bloom) in Bala Cynwyd, Montgomery County, PA - Resides in Haverford / Bala Cynwyd area, Pennsylvania; **richest individual resident of Pennsylvania** - Married to Janine Yass (also a major school-choice donor and AFC board member) - Forbes 2026 net worth: **$67.4 billion** (No. 28 globally); Bloomberg has placed him as high as the world's 25th-richest person - Net worth April 2024: $27.6 billion → December 2025: $65 billion → March 2026: $67.4 billion (driven principally by ByteDance pre-IPO valuation) ## Susquehanna International Group (SIG) SIG is the operational base of Yass's wealth and political influence. The firm's profile: - **Founded 1987** in Bala Cynwyd, PA — explicitly modeled on poker / probabilistic-decision frameworks Yass and his co-founders developed as professional gamblers - **Quantitative options market-making** is the original business; the firm pioneered modern quantitative options trading on U.S. exchanges - **Global trading operation** with major desks in Dublin, Hong Kong, Sydney, Mumbai, and Shanghai - **Privately held** — none of the original co-founders has ever taken outside capital or gone public; revenue and profit figures are not disclosed - **One of the largest market-makers in U.S. equity options**, executing a substantial share of daily U.S. options volume - **Estimated 60-100+ trading-strategy / quant-research employees per major desk**, with roughly 3,000+ total staff worldwide ### The ByteDance Position The defining SIG investment — and the source of most of Yass's 2024-2026 wealth appreciation — is the firm's stake in **ByteDance**, the Chinese parent company of TikTok and Douyin: - **2012**: SIG made its initial investment in ByteDance via its venture arm (SIG Asia Investments) - **Stake size**: Approximately **15% of ByteDance** (the largest non-Chinese institutional investor); Yass's personal share is approximately 7% - **Position value 2024**: Roughly $15 billion (Fortune); rose to roughly **$21 billion** by late 2025 as ByteDance's secondary-market valuation increased - **Total ByteDance stake (SIG + Yass personal)**: Estimated **$34 billion at risk** in any forced-divestiture or ban scenario (Philadelphia Inquirer, March 2024) - **2025 TikTok US joint venture / spinoff**: A SIG managing director was named to the new U.S. TikTok board of directors as part of the joint-venture structure announced in 2025 — directly converting the SIG ByteDance stake into a board seat at the U.S.-operating entity This position is the **most direct material conflict-of-interest in the contemporary U.S. donor class**: Yass is simultaneously the largest individual Republican donor and the single private investor with the largest financial exposure to a specific U.S. national-security regulatory decision. ## Political Activity Yass's political giving combines **federal megadonor activity**, **state-level Pennsylvania dominance**, and **issue-specific saturation funding** (overwhelmingly school choice and TikTok-ban opposition). He gave roughly **$3.2 million in Pennsylvania politics in 2018; $35 million in 2024**, an order-of-magnitude expansion that tracks his ByteDance-driven net-worth expansion. ### Federal Spending — 2026 cycle - 🔴 **$5,000,000.00 to [[Protect Freedom PAC]]**, the [[Rand Paul]]-aligned super PAC — **$3,000,000.00 received 2026-09-21** and itemised on the committee's Q3 2026 Form 3X (file 2019765, received 2026-10-12), with the row's aggregate showing **$2,000,000.00 given in an earlier period**. The $3,000,000.00 row is **95.56% of that committee's entire Q3 receipts**. See [[Jeff Yass 3M to Protect Freedom PAC]]. - **$325,000.00 to Aurora Action Network**, disclosed on that committee's Q3 report of 2026-10-11 (below the §7 Deal floor; recorded here for the pattern). ### Federal Spending — 2024 cycle - **Roughly $100 million in total 2024 federal spending** — the largest single-cycle individual federal donor of 2024 - **$19 million to Club for Growth Action PAC**, the cycle's principal vehicle for Yass federal money - **Substantial contributions to Senate Leadership Fund** and the McConnell-aligned Senate operation - **$1 million to the Moderate PAC** — a cross-party giving anomaly, supporting Democratic incumbents against progressive primary challengers (the only meaningful Democratic spending in his portfolio) - **Notably did NOT directly fund the Trump campaign through 2024** — Yass had given $10 million in July 2023 to a Club for Growth-affiliated anti-Trump primary effort and remained publicly neutral on the Trump nomination ### The March 2024 Trump Pivot The most documented inflection point in Yass's political trajectory: - **March 1, 2024**: Yass met with Donald Trump at a Club for Growth donor retreat in Palm Beach - **Days later**: Trump publicly reversed his prior support for a TikTok ban — the bill that had passed the House moments earlier on a 352-65 vote and was framed as a forced-divestiture-or-ban requirement on ByteDance - **March 2024 onward**: Trump began publicly opposing the TikTok ban using language consistent with the SIG / Yass framing (anti-Facebook framing, free-speech framing, market-competition framing) - **2025 executive orders**: Trump signed multiple executive orders extending the ByteDance divestment deadline, repeatedly delaying enforcement of the law that Congress had passed and Biden had signed in April 2024 ### 2025-2026 — Full Trump-Aligned Spending Following Trump's January 2025 inauguration: - **$16 million to MAGA Inc.** in H1 2025 — the single largest disclosed donation to the principal Trump super PAC during that period - **$2.5 million+ to the White House ballroom renovation fund** (an off-budget Trump construction project) - **$10 million to Vivek Ramaswamy's Ohio gubernatorial super PAC** in 2025 - **Roughly $55 million in disclosed federal political spending** by April 2026, ahead of the 2026 midterms - **Continued saturation funding of the Club for Growth ecosystem** and Pennsylvania school-choice operations - **$325,000 to [[Aurora Action Network]]** on **2026-07-08**, disclosed to the FEC **2026-10-11** on file **2019466** as a Line 11(a) itemized contribution. The filing carries a cycle **aggregate of $675,000.00** to that committee, implying roughly **$350,000** in an earlier, unread report. The committee is the one into which [[Elon Musk]] put $1,500,000.00 the same week, and which passed $1,500,000.00 to the Alaska ranked-choice-voting repeal campaign — see [[Elon Musk 1.5M to Aurora Action Network]]. Below the Deals §7 $1M-per-contribution floor; recorded, not built as its own Deal. ### Pennsylvania State-Level Operation Yass dominates Pennsylvania state politics to a degree few donors achieve in any state: - **Largest single donor in Pennsylvania state politics** — over **$75 million in PA elections since 2017** (TransparencyUSA) - **Students First PAC** (Wynnewood, PA): Founded 2010 by Yass and SIG co-founders; Yass has given **~$41.7 million to Students First** since 2010 and is functionally the sole funder - **[[Commonwealth Leaders Fund]] and Commonwealth Children's Choice Fund**: Operated by Republican operative **[[Matt Brouillette]]** through Commonwealth Partners (a 501(c)(6)). Students First has channeled at least $30.25 million into Brouillette's two PACs since 2018 — 78% of Students First's spending during that period - **2024 PA Attorney General race**: ~$6 million through Commonwealth Leaders Fund supporting Republican Dave Sunday over Democrat Eugene DePasquale (Sunday won) - **2022 PA primary**: $18+ million on a single primary cycle, mostly on school-choice issues - **2025 PA Supreme Court retention**: $3.5+ million personally (with Yass-funded vehicles spending the bulk of the $18.7 million in opposition spending) on the failed effort to oust Justices Christine Donohue, Kevin Dougherty, and David Wecht — all three were retained by ~800,000-vote margins ### School Choice — The Stated Prime Motive In a December 2025 *Washington Post* interview (one of the very few sit-down interviews Yass has given), he explicitly stated that **school vouchers are the prime motivation** of his political spending. The portfolio of school-choice giving: - **At least $34 million on school-choice spending in 2024 alone** (CNBC documentation) - **Major funder of the [[American Federation for Children]]** (DeVos / Betsy DeVos vehicle); Janine Yass sits on AFC's board - **Principal funder of the Pennsylvania school-voucher campaign** (decade-plus Lifeline Scholarship advocacy, ESA expansion, and tax-credit programs) - **Major Cato Institute trustee** — the libertarian intellectual home of school-choice advocacy - **Republican primary discipline mechanism**: Yass-funded PACs have repeatedly primaried Pennsylvania Republicans who voted against voucher legislation, making school-choice support an enforced loyalty test in PA Republican politics ## Institutional Positions - **Cato Institute**: Trustee for several decades — one of his longest-running institutional commitments, dating to before he became a major federal political donor - **Susquehanna International Group**: Co-founder, managing director, principal owner - **TikTok US (joint venture, 2025-)**: Indirect representation via SIG managing director board seat - **Club for Growth**: Largest single funder; not formally an officer but operationally the dominant donor - **Students First PAC (PA)**: Founder and sole effective funder - **American Federation for Children**: Major funder; Janine Yass on board ## Connection to the KB Ecosystem - **[[Republican Party]]**: As of 2024, the largest single individual donor in the U.S. — structurally central to Senate, House, and state Republican operations. - **[[Donald Trump]]**: From anti-Trump 2024 primary spender → largest 2025 MAGA Inc. donor; the Trump TikTok policy reversal is the single most documented case of a personal Trump–donor policy alignment in the second administration. - **[[Club for Growth]]**: Largest funder; the institutional vehicle through which most Yass federal spending flows; the venue of the March 2024 Trump-Yass meeting that preceded Trump's TikTok pivot. - **[[Cato Institute]]**: Long-standing trustee; the libertarian intellectual scaffolding for the privatization, school-choice, and anti-regulation positions Yass funds politically. - **[[School Choice]] / [[School Choice Ecosystem]]**: Single largest individual funder of the contemporary U.S. school-voucher movement; AFC, Students First, Commonwealth Children's Choice Fund, and the Pennsylvania voucher infrastructure are all primarily Yass-funded. - **[[American Federation for Children]]**: Major Yass-family funder via both Jeff and Janine Yass; the principal national vehicle for state-level school-choice elections. - **[[Senate Leadership Fund]]**: Mid-tier (top-10) named donor in the 2020s era. - **[[Trump Media and Technology Group]]**: SIG had pre-merger investment exposure to Digital World Acquisition Corp (DWAC), the SPAC that took Trump Media public in 2024 — adding a second discrete financial Trump-administration interest alongside the ByteDance position. - **[[Vivek Ramaswamy]]**: Largest 2025 funder of Ramaswamy's Ohio gubernatorial campaign apparatus. - **[[Ken Griffin]] / [[Paul Singer]]**: Peer megadonors at the SLF / federal-Republican level; Griffin and Yass both occupy the "establishment-wing megadonor with TikTok-or-tariff disagreements with Trump" niche, but Yass has accommodated Trump far more aggressively than Griffin. - **[[Dark Money Ecosystem]]**: Yass is principally a *disclosed* federal donor (visible on FEC filings), but the Pennsylvania state operation runs heavily through 501(c)(6) Commonwealth Partners and 501(c)(4) affiliates that obscure end-funder identity in state-level mailers. ## Open Questions / Research Threads - **2026 cycle TikTok policy alignment**: Whether the Trump administration enforces the ByteDance divestment law, allows the joint-venture spinoff to satisfy the statute, or further extends deadlines via executive action — and how Yass spending in the 2026 midterms tracks each scenario - **Pennsylvania 2026 Senate**: Whether Yass's PA Supreme Court 2025 loss redirects spending toward the open [[John Fetterman]]-vs.-challenger Senate contest if it materializes (see [[2026 Senate Races Hub]]) - **AFC / federal Education Freedom Tax Credit interaction**: How Yass-network spending interacts with the new federal Education Freedom Tax Credit program signed in the Trump 2025 tax package - **Cato vs. MAGA tension**: Yass's continued Cato Institute trustee role despite the Cato Institute's open opposition to nearly every Trump-administration foreign-policy, immigration, surveillance, and trade position — and whether this creates internal Cato governance friction analogous to the 2012 Koch-Cato lawsuit ## See Also - [[Club for Growth]] - [[Cato Institute]] - [[School Choice]] - [[School Choice Ecosystem]] - [[American Federation for Children]] - [[Senate Leadership Fund]] - [[Donald Trump]] - [[Ken Griffin]] - [[Paul Singer]] - [[Trump Media and Technology Group]] - [[Dark Money Ecosystem]]