Byron Donalds Data Centers & AI Corruption & Ethics Florida

Byron Donalds Says 'There Ain't No Bans Coming' for Data Centers. He and His Wife Own Up to $390,000 in Data-Center Stocks.

Byron Donalds is telling business leaders Florida is 'wide open' and 'pristine.' His own financial disclosure shows up to $390,000 in stocks of companies that profit when those data centers get built.

MAGA Report Cards · Oct 16, 2026

Byron Donalds Says 'There Ain't No Bans Coming' for Data Centers. He and His Wife Own Up to $390,000 in Data-Center Stocks. — Photo: Mother Jones; Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call/ZUMA; Jim West/UCG/Universal/Getty

In Florida counties like Citrus and Sarasota, people are fighting data centers — the giant warehouses of computers that run AI. Byron Donalds, the Republican running for governor, is on the other side. He's told business leaders the state is open for development, and he's promised there won't be any bans.

Now we know he isn't just a fan. He's an investor.

Mother Jones reported this week that Donalds and his wife own up to $390,000 in stocks connected to companies involved in building and running data centers.

What he owns

The holdings show up in Donalds's own financial disclosure — the report every member of Congress has to file — covering 2025. It lists shares in the biggest names in the data-center business:

Microsoft, Amazon, Alphabet (Google) and Meta — the companies building the giant data centers
Nvidia and Broadcom — the companies that make the chips inside them
Monolithic Power Systems — a company headquartered in Florida that Mother Jones lists among his data-center holdings

When these companies build more data centers, they make more money. When they make more money, their stock goes up. And Donalds's stock goes up with it.

What he's said

Donalds hasn't been shy. Last spring, according to Mother Jones, he told a room of Miami business people that Florida was "wide open" for development. "We have actual land in our state that is still pristine, available to use," he said.

In August, with critics pushing for pauses on new data centers, Donalds shut the idea down: "There ain't no bans coming," he said at a campaign event.

His running mate, state Senator Bryan Ávila, filed a bill this year that would have created public-records exemptions — effectively shielding data-center developers' plans from public view for up to a year. It didn't pass.

Meanwhile, Floridians who live near proposed sites are scared. One Citrus County resident told Mother Jones: "Everything for this election, for me, is based on the data centers at this point."

"My broker does it"

Donalds's defense is that he doesn't pick the stocks. "My broker does it on my behalf because I gave him that authority and that authorization when I opened up the accounts," he said in July.

An ethics expert says that's not how conflicts of interest work. Kedric Payne of the Campaign Legal Center, a nonpartisan watchdog, told Mother Jones that a claim like that "does not in any way remove the conflict of interest or the ethical issues."

"Even if he is not involved in the trading, he would have the ability to influence the value of the stocks, possibly with his official duties," Payne said.

That's the point. As governor, Donalds would have a huge say over where data centers go, what they pay, and how fast they get approved. Every one of those decisions could move the value of stocks he owns. He also sits on the House subcommittee that covers artificial intelligence right now.

His campaign didn't respond to Mother Jones's repeated requests for comment.

A long record of stock trouble

This isn't the first time Donalds's stocks have been a problem.

In 2024, the Campaign Legal Center filed a complaint saying he failed to disclose up to $1.6 million in stock trades on time, as federal law requires. We've written about how he demanded "sanctions" for stock traders and then broke the same law 108 times.
His disclosures have also been wrong his whole time in Congress, including a mortgage of up to $1 million from a lender his committee regulates.
And on data centers specifically, Donalds promised they wouldn't raise your electric bill, even though the law he points to doesn't say that — while data-center developers have given him $894,000.

So the man promising Floridians that data centers won't hurt them has taken money from the developers and holds stock in the industry.

What the disclosure shows

Byron Donalds and his wife own up to $390,000 in stocks tied to the data-center industry — including Microsoft, Amazon, Nvidia and Florida-based Monolithic Power Systems — according to his own 2025 financial disclosure. While holding them, he has told business leaders Florida is "wide open," promised "there ain't no bans coming," and is running to be the governor who decides where those data centers go.