President-elect Donald Trump is recruiting tech heavyweights for his latest administration, continuing the trend of Silicon Valley's growing influence in a second Trump White House.
Trump said Sunday He would name Scott Kupor, a managing partner at Andreessen Horowitz, as director of the Office of Personnel Management, which coordinates recruiting and provides resources for presidency staff.
Kupor thanked Trump in a post
Trump also picked Sriram Krishnan as senior policy advisor for artificial intelligence within the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. Krishnan, who most recently served as general partner at Andreessen Horowitz, has a protracted profession in technology, including at Microsoft, MetaTwitter, Snap and Yahoo. He had previous connections to Musk and helped him “temporarily” operate the social media service X after Musk acquired the platform formerly often known as Twitter for $44 billion in 2022.
Musk, a tech billionaire who was considered one of Trump's biggest donors and most vocal supporters during his campaign, has emerged as considered one of the president-elect's closest advisers. His outsized influence over Trump has led to growing consternation amongst Democrats, foreign leaders and business managers, a few of whom compete with Musk's corporations. Musk runs the vehicle manufacturer along with X Tesladefense company SpaceX and brain-tech startup Neuralink.
Krishnan will likely work closely with David Sacks, one other technology executive who has a protracted history with Musk. Earlier this month, Trump named Sacks – a former enterprise capitalist PayPal COO and popular podcaster – because the “czar” of crypto and AI.
Trump on Sunday also picked Ken Howery, a co-founder of PayPal and Founders Fund, as his nominee for U.S. ambassador to the Kingdom of Denmark. And him appointed Michael Kratsios, who was most recently managing director at technology startup Scale AI, as director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. Kratsios served as chief technology officer during Trump's first term.
In addition, Trump named former Above Managing Director Emil Michael as Undersecretary of State for Research and Technology.
Leading technology corporations applauded the selections in social media posts. Former meta manager David Marcus called Trump's selection was a “remarkable selection,” while boxing boss Aaron Levie said The decisions were “very strong”.
Since Trump's election victory, quite a few technology corporations have supported the president-elect – a marked difference from his first term in office, when the industry as a complete had a tense relationship with Trump.
AmazonMeta and OpenAI Sam Altman have announced donations of $1 million each to Trump's inauguration committee. And in recent weeks, Silicon Valley executives have made a pilgrimage to Trump's Mar-a-Lago residence in Palm Beach, Florida.
image credit : www.cnbc.com