Reid Hoffman’s Backstage Role in AI and U.S. Politics

The Microsoft board member and LinkedIn founder uses his network to broker key AI deals and make political moves on behalf of the Democratic Party. He is intensifying his focus on AI companies.

Reid Hoffman in 2016. Source.

Reid Hoffman is the cofounder, former CEO, and former chairman of the professional networking site LinkedIn. He was also an early investor in Facebook and Airbnb, and has since served on the boards of some of the most influential technology companies in the world, in particular Microsoft and OpenAI, where he played a key role in brokering the partnership between the two companies that allowed OpenAI to scale up its computing capacity and ultimately launch the current wave of AI optimism and investment since 2022.¹ Hoffman is a major software investor, both on his own and as a partner at Greylock Partners, where he has been a partner since 2009. He is further one of the most well-networked figures in Silicon Valley and a member of the so-called “PayPal Mafia” of that company’s founding team which includes Peter Thiel and Elon Musk. Greylock has since invested in other major artificial intelligence labs like Anthropic and Hoffman has personally cofounded two AI startups, Inflection AI and Manas AI. As of October 2025, Hoffman has an estimated net worth of $2.5 billion.² Like Eric Schmidt or Laurene Powell-Jobs, Hoffman is also one of the key nodes bridging Silicon Valley with the Democratic Party.