With Elon Musk enjoying such a high-profile function in Donald Trump’s transition staff, Musk’s buddies, lots of them Silicon Valley enterprise capitalists, are reportedly being tapped to assist out.
As an example, VC agency Andreessen Horowitz, and specifically cofounder Marc Andreessen, is repeatedly being talked about. He, together with Antonio Gracias and Joe Lonsdale, are reportedly being requested to assist with Musk’s advisory panel, the Division of Authorities Effectivity, which is inspecting methods to beat the technical challenges of amassing information about federal packages, reported the Washington Put up on Sunday.
They’re amongst a handful of different Silicon Valley moguls being tapped.
Gracias is co-founder of Valor Fairness Companions, which has finished nicely backing Musk firms through the years, together with SpaceX and Tesla (the latter the place he was on the board of administrators from 2007 to 2021). Lonsdale is cofounder of VC agency 8VC, and an energetic backer of protection tech (like Anduril) and different authorities tech, like monetary software program supplier OpenGov. Lonsdale labored underneath billionaire VC Peter Thiel and helped cofound Palantir. A16z has been a big-time investor in SpaceX since round 2022 – and buys extra inventory as it will possibly, TechCrunch beforehand reported, and Andreessen has been a vocal supporter of Musk.
The DOGE committee hopes to suggest cuts to packages and to scale back the variety of federal staff, Musk and former presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy defined in a Wall Avenue Journal editorial final week. Additionally they anticipate to face authorized pushback, they wrote. Within the rapid future, the group plans to launch a podcast, WaPo stories.
In the meantime, Andreessen Horowitz can be mentioned to be within the operating for a place on a promised Trump administration crypto advisory council. It will likely be staffed with a lot of execs from the crypto business who search to assist the U.S. set up crypto coverage, business executives advised Reuters final week. Brian Quintenz, head of coverage for a16z crypto, has already been advising Trump’s staff, Reuters stories.
One other VC being mentioned for a spot on this committee is Paradigm, an funding agency co-founded by Fred Ehrsam, earlier co-founder of Coinbase. Paradigm makes a speciality of crypto/blockchain investments. Coinbase, which isn’t a VC agency however does fund its personal company agency, Coinbase Ventures, can be within the committee, sources inform Reuters.
In the meantime, former Thiel disciple Michael Kratsios, who served as chief tech officer underneath the primary Trump administration, has reportedly been tapped to deal with tech coverage for Trump’s transition staff, Politico reported final week. Kratsios was identified for authoring Trump’s 2020 pro-AI funding government order. Previous to his function in authorities, he labored for Thiel Capital. Kratsios, nevertheless, isn’t at the moment a VC. He’s been working at AI firm Scale AI since 2021, based on his LinkedIn.
A16z and Lonsdale couldn’t be instantly reached for remark. Additionally they didn’t reply to request for remark by the Washington Put up.
