Who are the largest individual conservative donors in the US in 2024?

1. The headline donor: Elon Musk and the scale of 2024’s mega‑gifts

Multiple independent trackers identified Elon Musk as the single largest individual donor in the 2024 cycle — nearly $300 million directed to Republican candidates, committees and outside groups — making him far and away the top individual spender that year ^{[1] [2]}. Reporting that cites OpenSecrets’ tabulations frames Musk not as an outlier in method but in magnitude: the era’s largest donors are concentrated, and a handful of billionaires moved the needle for conservative outside spending in 2024 ^{[4] [2]}.

2. Who else is in the top tier — and what the data sources say

OpenSecrets is the primary public aggregator used by major outlets to rank individual donors, and its lists of top donors for the 2024 cycle include multiple billionaires, hedge fund managers and tech founders who directed most of their money to Republican or conservative outside groups ^{[3] [6]}. Major summaries of the cycle note that of the largest individual givers, a strong majority supported Republican causes, and that the top ten donors collectively accounted for more than a billion dollars in disclosed contributions ^{[2] [7]}.

3. Notable exceptions and partisan breakdowns

While conservatives dominated the top donor list, a handful of wealthy individuals gave primarily to Democrats; prominent examples cited by national outlets include Mike Bloomberg and Dustin Moskovitz as among the few top donors whose disclosed giving skewed liberal in 2024 ^[4]. Similarly, investigative coverage of philanthropic donors shows a subset of ultra‑wealthy donors whose political giving favored Republicans by sizable margins in aggregate, underscoring that the headline winners were part of broader partisan patterns ^[8].

4. Why the rankings matter — mechanisms of influence and transparency

Rankings published by OpenSecrets and visual summaries used by outlets are drawn from FEC disclosure data and outside‑spending reports; those compilations count direct contributions to candidates and parties, plus money funneled to PACs and independent expenditure groups, which is why a small number of individuals can exercise outsized influence ^{[3] [5]}. Because many high‑value contributions flow to “outside” organizations and super PACs, the list of largest individual donors is as much a map of spending channels as it is of partisan intent ^[6].

5. Limits of current reporting and where to look for definitive lists

Public reporting converges on the same structural facts — Musk tops the list and billionaire giving skewed conservative — but a definitive, fully granular ranked list (names and exact dollar totals for every top donor) is maintained in FEC raw filings and OpenSecrets’ compiled tables rather than in every news summary; readers seeking the complete ranked roster should consult OpenSecrets’ “Biggest Donors” and the FEC database for the 2023–2024 cycle ^{[3] [5]}. Journalistic summaries sometimes emphasize the biggest headlines or illustrative names, so cross‑checking the original disclosures is required for a full accounting ^{[4] [6]}.

6. Bottom line: who were the largest individual conservative donors in 2024?

The short answer: Elon Musk was the largest individual conservative donor in 2024, contributing nearly $300 million to Republican-aligned entities; broader datasets from OpenSecrets and other compilers show that most of the other top individual givers in 2024 were wealthy billionaires, hedge fund and tech executives who directed the majority of their spending to conservative candidates and outside groups — a pattern reflected across multiple reporting outlets and the underlying FEC disclosures ^{[1] [3] [4] [2] [6]}.