Tech investor Marc Andreessen, co-founder of venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, warned that universities will “pay the price” for promoting diversity and allegedly discriminating against supporters of President Donald Trump, according to screenshots of chat messages reviewed by The Washington Post.
During a May 3, 2025, WhatsApp chat with White House officials and tech leaders, Andreessen reportedly criticized DEI and immigration policies after being invited by moderator Sriram Krishnan, a White House senior policy adviser on AI, to counter a comment about their impact on economic growth. The outlet also noted that Krishnan had created the group chat at the time he was working at Andreessen’s firm.
The group chat, formed in 2023 before Trump’s current term, connects investors and experts with diverse political views interested in open AI development. In addition to Andreessen and Krishnan, members include White House AI adviser Dean Ball, Meta’s chief AI scientist Yann LeCun, Stanford professor Fei-Fei Li, and Andreessen Horowitz partner Steven Sinofsky, according to two chat members who wished to remain anonymous.
“The combination of DEI and immigration is politically lethal,” Andreessen said.
“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.”
Andreessen, who has discreetly influenced the Trump administration hiring and policy, targeted the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Stanford University, calling them “political lobbying operations fighting American innovation.”
He claimed universities in general are “at Ground Zero of the counterattack” from Trump voters — accusing schools of favoring immigrants over Americans and pushing DEI policies — and called for the National Science Foundation to receive “the bureaucratic death penalty” for supporting research tied to online censorship.
“They declared war on 70% of the country and now they’re going to pay the price,” Andreessen said of universities without mentioning specific ones, per The Post.
As AFROTECH™ previously told you, Trump has signed several executive orders targeting DEI initiatives in the federal government and issued a memo directing schools and universities to eliminate such practices in admissions, financial aid, and hiring or risk losing federal funding.
While Andreessen has supported both Democratic and Republican candidates in the past, Andreessen Horowitz endorsed Trump after his attempted assassination in July 2024, citing a need to shield tech startups from targeted Biden-era policies.
Andreessen has repeatedly criticized DEI, affirmative action, and federal agencies and universities, claiming they radicalize young tech workers and are “unfixable,” The Post reported.
The two group members previously mentioned said Andreessen deleted many of his messages shortly after sending them in early May and soon stopped participating in the chat altogether, per The Post. Andreessen and the other named members of the chat did not provide comment, the outlet noted. The White House stated that its members engaged in the chat in a personal capacity and not officially.