Mike Bloomberg Is Plowing Millions of Dollars Into a Secretive Tech Firm Called Hawkfish

As a way to help his 2020 presidential bid, presidential candidate Mike Bloomberg is pouring tens of millions of dollars into an unknown digital business called Hawkfish -- which Bloomberg himself founded during the spring. CNBC reports: Hawkfish will be the "primary digital agency and technology services provider for the campaign," Julie Wood, a Bloomberg campaign spokeswoman, told CNBC. She added that the firm "is now providing digital ad services, including content creation, ad placement and analytics" for their campaign. It will also help Democratic races across the country in future election cycles, she said. Bloomberg, a billionaire former three-term mayor of New York, started building the company early in 2019, before he decided to seek the Democratic presidential nomination, the campaign aide said. While the campaign declined to say how much Bloomberg has invested in the company, Bloomberg has said he will spend over $100 million on anti-Trump digital ads. His campaign has already spent at least $13 million on Facebook and Google spots.

Bloomberg, who was dedicated to denying President Donald Trump a second term before he entered the Democratic race, built Hawkfish with the intention of overpowering the formidable data operation assembled by the Republican National Committee and Trump's cash-flush campaign. Hawkfish appears to have been assembled in secret. It has no public website. A search of elections databases turned up no financial records connected to work for other Democratic causes. No other candidate in the 2020 race is known to have created a vendor designed to aide their bid. [...] Using research company Accurint, CNBC reporters went to a New York address that was associated with Hawkfish. At the address, 909 Third Avenue, an attendant at the front desk said no business named Hawkfish existed there. The Bloomberg campaign spokeswoman said the address, which is about a five-minute walk from Bloomberg's namesake company, was only used for receiving paperwork. The address is the same as Mike Bloomberg's longtime accountant, Geller & Company. Hawkfish's leadership ranks include longtime Facebook Chief Marketing Officer Gary Briggs, and Jeff Glueck, former CEO of location-tracking firm Foursquare.

Glueck hinted that other former Silicon Valley players were with the company, but didn't name names. "The Bloomberg campaign is posting Hawkfish jobs on its website, including graphic designer, copywriter, video editor and senior software engineer," adds CNBC.

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