With Elon Musk playing such a high-profile role in Donald Trump’s transition team, Musk’s friends, many of them Silicon Valley venture capitalists, are reportedly being called on to help.
For example, VC firm Andreessen Horowitz, specifically co-founder Marc Andreessen, is mentioned repeatedly. He, along with Antonio Gracias and Joe Lonsdale, are reportedly being tapped to help with Musk’s advisory group, the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, which is looking at ways to overcome the technical challenges of collecting data on federal programs, she said Washington Post on Sunday.
He is among a handful of other Silicon Valley tycoons being tapped.
Gracias is a co-founder of Valor Equity Partners, which has backed Musk companies well over the years, including SpaceX and Tesla (the latter where he was on the board from 2007 to 2021). Lonsdale is a co-founder of VC firm 8VC and an active supporter of defense technology such as Anduril and other government technology such as financial software provider OpenGov. Lonsdale worked under billionaire VC Peter Thiel and helped found Palantir. Andreessen Horowitz has been a big investor in SpaceX since around 2022 and is buying up as much stock as he can, TechCrunch previously reported, and Andreessen has been a staunch supporter of Musk.
The DOGE panel hopes to recommend program cuts and reduce the number of federal employees, Musk and former presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy explained. a Wall Street Journal article last week. They also expect to face legal pushback, they wrote. In the near future, the group plans to launch a podcast, the Washington Post reports.
Meanwhile, Andreessen Horowitz is also said to be in the running for a position on a Trump administration crypto advisory board. It will be staffed with a number of crypto industry executives seeking to help the US enact policy, crypto industry executives told Reuters last week. Brian Quintenz, head of crypto policy at a16z, is already advising Trump’s team, Reuters reports.
Another VC being discussed for a seat on this committee is Paradigm, an investment firm co-founded by Fred Ehrsam, who previously co-founded Coinbase. Paradigm specializes in crypto/blockchain investments. Coinbase, which is not a VC firm but funds its own corporate arm, Coinbase Ventures, is also interested in the committee, sources told Reuters.
Meanwhile, Thiel’s former student Michael Kratsios, who served as chief technology officer in the first Trump administration, has reportedly been tapped to handle technology policy for Trump’s transition team. Politico reported last week. Kratsios was known for drafting Trump’s 2020 pro-AI investment executive order. Prior to his government role, he worked for Thiel Capital. Kratsios, however, is currently not a VC. He has been working at the AI company Scale AI since 2021, according to his LinkedIn.
Lonsdale and a16z could not immediately be reached for comment. They also did not respond to The Washington Post’s request for comment.
