# Sky Dayton **Sky Dayton** is an American internet entrepreneur and investor. He founded the internet provider [[EarthLink]] in 1994 and the Wi-Fi network Boingo Wireless in 2001, and co-founded the ghost-kitchen company [[CloudKitchens]] in 2016. **Why he's on the map:** Dayton has invested alongside [[David Sacks]] and is one of three outside donors who each gave $50,000 to [[Purple Good Government PAC]], the committee Sacks uses for his political giving. His own donations since 2021 have gone to both parties, with the largest sums going to Republican-aligned committees. ## Business - **EarthLink and Boingo.** Dayton started EarthLink at 23 and Boingo seven years later, and chaired Boingo until August 2014. From 2005 he ran Helio, a mobile-phone joint venture of EarthLink and SK Telecom that was sold to Virgin Mobile USA in 2008. - **CloudKitchens.** He and [[Diego Berdakin]] founded the company in Los Angeles in 2016. In March 2018 [[Travis Kalanick]] paid $150 million for control of its parent, City Storage Systems, and became chief executive. - **A deal with Sacks.** In January 2019 Dayton and Sacks's firm, [[Craft Ventures]], jointly led a $25 million investment in the satellite startup [[Swarm Technologies]], which [[SpaceX]] bought in 2021. ## A name on X's shareholder list The list of owners of X Holdings Corp., the parent of [[X (Twitter)]], was unsealed by a federal court in August 2024. It includes two companies named Dayton Family Enterprises, LLC and Dayton Family Investments, LLC. The filing does not say who is behind them. Dayton gives "Dayton Family Enterprises" as his employer on campaign-finance filings. ## Political giving All figures are from [[Federal Election Commission]] records. | Date | Recipient | Amount | |---|---|---| | September 29, 2021 | [[Blake Masters]] for Senate | $5,800 | | February 15, 2022 | [[Purple Good Government PAC]] | $50,000 | | June 15, 2023 | Common Sense | $5,000 | | November 6, 2023 | Obernolte Victory Fund, the joint fundraising committee of Rep. [[Jay Obernolte]] | $25,000 | | December 8, 2025 | Obernolte Victory Fund | $50,000 | | January 20, 2026 | Truth and Courage PAC, the super PAC that backs Sen. [[Ted Cruz]] | $50,000 | The Common Sense gift came 12 days before Sacks's committee gave the same group $93,400. Dayton has also given to Democrats in the same years, among them Rep. [[Ro Khanna]] and [[Joe Manchin]], who was then a Democratic senator. ## Connections - [[David Sacks]] · [[Purple Good Government PAC]] · [[Craft Ventures]] - [[EarthLink]] · [[Swarm Technologies]] · [[Jay Obernolte]] - [[Diego Berdakin]] · [[CloudKitchens]] · [[Travis Kalanick]] - [[Musk Twitter Acquisition]] · [[X (Twitter)]]