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Billionaire Trump ally Marc Andreessen warned that elite universities like MIT and Stanford will have to “pay the price” for DEI as he called for a “counterattack” on educational institutions in a group chat with tech leaders and White House officials.
“I view Stanford and MIT as mainly political lobbying operations fighting American innovation at this point,” the co-founder of the Andreessen-Horowitz venture capital firm wrote, according to screenshots of messages sent May 3 and obtained by the Washington Post.
“The universities are at Ground Zero of the counterattack.”
Andreessen, whose firm has $42 billion in assets under management, has donated millions of dollars to Stanford over the years.
He blasted Stanford and other top universities for favoring DEI initiatives that bring in foreign students over US citizens — a sentiment shared by President Trump and Tesla founder Elon Musk.
“The combination of DEI and immigration is politically lethal. When these two forms of discrimination combine, as they have for the last 60 years and on hyperdrive for the last decade, they systematically cut most of the children of the Trump voter base out of any realistic prospect of access to higher education and corporate America,” Andreesseen wrote, according to the report.
“They declared war on 70% of the country and now they’re going to pay the price.”
The rapid-fire blast of texts were sent to a WhatsApp group used by Trump officials to discuss AI policy with tech leaders and academics, according to the Washington Post.
A White House official told the Washington Post that members of the Trump administration participated in the chat in a personal capacity, that no official policy was discussed and that Andreessen was not an official adviser to the president.
The White House did not immediately respond to The New York Post’s request for comment.
Andreessen deleted many of the messages after sending them, according to screenshots and two members of the text chat who spoke to the newspaper.
In the group chat, Andreessen allegedly called for the National Science Foundation, an independent government agency that funds research, to receive “the bureaucratic death penalty.”
“Raze it to the ground and start over,” He reportedly wrote.
Andreessen claimed the agency had backed projects that censored American citizens online – taking a staunch free speech stance similar to Musk, who has loosened content restrictions on X and inspired similar moves from other tech leaders like Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg.
He also alleged Stanford had ousted his wife, Laura Arrillaga-Andreessen, from her role as chair of the university’s philanthropy center.
“[T]hey forced my wife out of Stanford without a second thought, a decision that will cost them something like $5 billion in future donations,” Andreessen wrote, according to the screenshots.
Representatives for Andreessen Horowitz, Arrillaga-Andreessen and Stanford did not immediately respond to The Post’s requests for comment.
“MIT is merit-based and affordable, driven by innovation and entrepreneurship, and committed to excellence,” a university spokesperson told The Post, adding that MIT admits applicants prior to learning their financial circumstances.
Some members of the chat found Andreessen’s comments out of character for the group – which was often used to argue that a crackdown on immigration and attacks on universities could make it more difficult to attract and train top tech talent, the sources said.
Andreessen argued that his “cohort of citizens” had once been willing to accept diversity policies as the cost of past bigotry in the US, “even though the discrimination was now aimed at us,” according to the text screenshots.
“The insanity of the last 8 years and in particular the summer of 2020, totally shredded that complacency…And so now my people are furious and not going to take it anymore.”
Andreessen stopped using the group chat soon after his messages in May, according to the report.
The group chat is moderated by Sriram Krishnan, a White House senior policy adviser on AI. He created the group before Trump’s second term, while he was working as a partner at Andreessen’s firm, according to the report.
Some of the experts in the chat include Yann LeCun, Meta’s chief AI scientist and NYU professor who supported Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign; and Fei-Fei Li, a Stanford professor and robotics entrepreneur who worked with the Biden administration on government funding for AI projects.
The group has recently debated the Trump administration’s budget cuts to the NSF and whether export curbs should be placed on Chinese AI firm DeepSeek, two members of the chat told the news outlet.
The tech industry has typically lobbied for research funding and high-skilled immigration policies, like permitting student visas. Andreessen has seemingly sided with Trump’s approach – targeting universities, criticizing DEI and affirmative action, slashing research funds and moving to cancel student visas.
Andreessen has supported Democratic presidential candidates, including Hillary Clinton in 2016, as well as Republicans, like Mitt Romney in 2012.
His firm endorsed Trump last July after the assassination attempt during a Butler, Pa. rally, arguing the Republican could help reverse harsh Biden-era policies that stifled tech advancements.
Andreessen’s firm also financially backed Musk’s takeover of Twitter in 2022, saying it would encourage free speech.
English (US)