Greylock partner and LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman speaks at the WSJ Tech Live conference hosted by the Wall Street Journal at Montage Laguna Beach on October 21, 2024 in Laguna Beach, California.
Frederick J. Brown | AFP | Getty Images
Two of the key members of the PayPal Mafia are sparring again. This time it’s about artificial intelligence.
Billionaire tech investor and LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman on Monday called Anthropic “one of the good guys” after the company was criticized last week by venture capitalist David Sachs, President Donald Trump’s AI and cryptocurrency czar.
“Anthropic, along with other companies (Microsoft, Google, OpenAI, etc.), is deploying AI thoughtfully, safely, and in the right way to provide significant benefits to society,” Hoffman wrote about X. “That’s why I’m so passionate about their success.”
Hoffman has been on Microsoft’s board since 2017, shortly after the company sold LinkedIn to the software giant. microsoft is a major investor and partner in OpenAI. Hoffman was also an early investor in Anthropic’s biggest rival, OpenAI, and remains a shareholder. He announced Monday that his partner Greylock is investing in Anthropic.
Greylock and Anthropic did not respond to requests for comment.
In a series of posts, Hoffman tried to avoid commenting directly on companies like OpenAI and Anthropic, but said, “It’s important to support good companies in all industries, but especially in AI.”
Hoffman and Sacks were both early employees. paypaljoined the company in 1999 and assumed key roles at the payments company. Along with Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, Max Levchin, and a group of other prominent technologists, they were part of what became known as the PayPal mafia because of the many successful companies they later founded.
But Hoffman and Sachs have recently become public adversaries, largely due to political differences. Mr. Hoffman is a major Democratic donor, contributing millions of dollars to Kamala Harris’ unsuccessful presidential campaign.
Before joining the administration, Mr. Sachs had emerged as an ardent supporter of Mr. Trump ahead of the 2024 election. He hosted a fundraiser for President Trump at his San Francisco mansion.
The politics of AI
AI has become a highly politicized issue, largely due to safety issues and disagreements over how AI should be regulated.
Anthropic was founded in 2021 by a group of former OpenAI executives and researchers who left the company over safety concerns. Last week, Jack Clark, one of the company’s co-founders and current policy director, published an essay titled “Technological Optimism and Appropriate Fear,” which spurred the regulatory debate.
U.S. President Donald Trump’s “AI and crypto czar” David Sachs speaks with President Trump as he signs a series of executive orders in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, DC, on January 23, 2025.
Anna Moneymaker | Getty Images
Sachs criticized the essay and, in a post on X, accused Anthropic of “pursuing a sophisticated regulatory acquisition strategy based on fear-mongering.” He said the company is “primarily responsible for the state regulatory frenzy that is damaging the startup ecosystem.”
Antropic has repeatedly pushed back against federal efforts to block state-level regulation of AI. It includes a provision supported by President Trump that would block the regulation for 10 years.
After Hoffman shared his thoughts on Anthropic on Monday, Sachs and Musk, who own a competing AI company called xAI and were key figures early in the second Trump administration, quickly responded.
“The powerful funders of legislation and dirty tricks against President Trump want you to know that ‘Anthropic is one of the good guys,'” Sachs wrote in response to Hoffman on Monday. “Thank you for explaining in detail. We have everything we wanted to know.”
“Sure,” Musk replied.
On Monday the chirping came and went.
“It shows you didn’t read the post (not shocked),” Hoffman wrote. “When you’re ready to have a professional conversation about how AI will impact America, I’ll be here to talk.”
Jason Calacanis, co-host of the All-In podcast, along with Sachs and two other tech friends, responded to Hoffman saying, “We’d like you to come on the podcast,” and invited him this week. Hoffman previously joined the show in late August, about two months before the presidential election.
Hoffman wrote that he was “positive about returning” but was “busy this week.”
— CNBC’s MacKenzie Sigalos contributed to this report
WATCH: Anthropic’s Mike Krieger talks about new model releases and the race to build real-world AI agents
