Billionaire investors of the internet era are now locked in a war of words and influence to determine whether AI’s future will be one of concentrated safety, or of unfettered advancement. The stakes couldn’t be higher.and blazer despite the warm early May day, Vinod Khosla surveys the packed auditorium in the bowels of the U.S. Capitol complex before setting the stakes of the debate at hand. “Winning the race for AI means economic power, which then lets you influence social policy or ideology.
“How do we help as many good people, like doctors, and as few bad people, like criminals?” Hoffman, 56 and the cofounder of LinkedIn, muses of the challenge. “My view is to find the fastest way that we can accelerate while taking intelligent risks, while also acknowledging those risks.” All three billionaire investors appear on this year’s Midas List of the world’s top tech investors for investments that reach beyond AI—with Hoffman at No. 8, Khosla at No. 9 and Andreessen at No. 36—but it’s in the emerging category where their influence is most acutely felt. These prominent leaders of the last tech revolution are now pushing their views on the key topics of the next.
Khosla says he and Hoffman are in “very similar places” in their policy views. “I think a balanced approach is better for society, lowering the risk while preserving the upside,” he says. The cohost of Silicon Valley fundraisers for Biden this campaign cycle, he submitted a comment to the U.S. Copyright Office in October in defense of AI models being trained on copyrighted material .
For Casado, who sold networking startup Nicira for $1 billion–plus to VMware in 2012, it’s a story he and Andreessen have seen before: Legislators, upset at how much power accrued to social media companies like Meta, are still fighting the last regulatory war. Hoffman invested in OpenAI’s nonprofit through his foundation, not his firm Greylock. But he has close ties to Microsoft, which acquired LinkedIn for $26 billion and where he sits on the board, and he was a key broker of Microsoft’s deep relationship with OpenAI. Months before the tech giant’s multibillion investment in January 2023, Hoffman had set up a meeting of executives at both companies, including Altman and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, at cofounder Bill Gates’ house.
Following self-interest is, of course, a big part of a public company’s fiduciary responsibility, notes Index Ventures partner Mike Volpia board director at business-focused AI model unicorn Cohere. Volpi says he sees concern that the biggest model makers are using their sway to lock in an early lead as a “valid” partial explanation.