- Silicon Valley bigwig Marc Andreessen has joined the group of billionaires assisting President-elect Donald Trump on policy, looking ahead to his inauguration in 2025.
Staff at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort are accustomed to witnessing a billionaire or two wandering through its halls—but since the presidential election that number has spiked.
Not only is Tesla CEO Elon Musk becoming something of a fixture at the Florida complex, but fellow tech titans like Marc Andreessen are also spending a significant amount of their time there.
In fact, Andreessen—cofounder and general partner of VC giant Andreessen Horowitz—revealed he has spent about half his time at the Palm Beach site since the November election concluded.
“[I’m there] a fair amount—maybe half my time down there since the election,” Andreessen told the Honestly With Bari Weiss podcast in an episode released Tuesday.
“Look, I’m not claiming to be, like, in the middle of all the decision-making, but I’ve been trying to help in as many ways as I can. Trump brings out a lot of feelings in a lot of people—people have very strong views—and then there are many political topics that we’re very deliberately not weighing in on.”
This includes foreign policy, abortion policy, and gun policy, he added: “I’m not an expert on those things.”
What Andreessen—worth $1.9 billion per Forbes—is helping form is policy on tech, business, economics, and the “success of the country” more generally.
As well as Musk, Andreessen joins the likes of Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg who have been invited into the president-elect’s resort.
“He’s an incredible host,” Andreessen continued. “He loves being the host; he loves being surrounded by his friends and family and grandkids and the members of his various clubs.
“It’s also really interesting to watch him at work. He treats everybody the same, and he talks to everybody—I think this is one of his real unappreciated strengths that people didn’t get for a long time.
“He will happily talk to distinguished visitors about like who the vice president should be, and then he’ll ask the caddy. It’s been painted in a negative way, but there’s a real strength to it, which is like he really talks to regular people a lot, he’s in that mode all the time talking to everybody.”
In addition to helping form policy, Andreessen added, he has also been lending his expertise in hiring staff.
Previously Andreessen had confirmed he was helping hire in Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) but added he’s been looking more widely at the “officials coming in.”
“The caliber of a lot of the people I have met has been very high,” he noted. “The flow of talent seems very strong.”
‘I just want America to win’
Andreessen Horowitz—also known as a16z—clearly has an eye for winning companies. After all, it’s invested in Meta, Slack, Airbnb, Skype, and Coinbase to name a few.
That’s why the former Democratic supporter believes he is being trusted by Trump and his team to handle growing the tech industry across the U.S.
Andreessen said Trump’s aim is clear—he just wants America to “win.” This will be of little surprise to those who have followed Trump’s political rhetoric.
Let’s not forget, this is a man who has threatened trading partners with tariffs of anywhere between 10% and 100% in a bid to rebalance power dynamics.
“His thing with us was like … ‘You guys are in tech. I don’t know much about tech, but I don’t need to, ’cause you guys know a lot about it. You guys should go build tech companies—American tech companies should win.’”
He continued with what Trump’s outlook entails: “American tech companies should be the winning companies. We should beat China, we should export, we should make the products the world wants. Our economy should be growing a lot faster. We should be creating a lot more jobs; everybody who wants a good job in America should have one—and that will be the result of American companies succeeding. And I want America to win.”
On trade, Andreessen added that Trump has pushed back on anti-trade criticism and simply wants a level playing field.