One month after Donald Trump’s swearing-in, big names in tech appear to be spending more time in Washington, DC, according to venture capitalist Keith Rabois.
Many tech leaders, from Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg to Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, attended Trump’s inauguration last month.
But if a chance meeting that Khosla Ventures’ Rabois had last week is any indication, some of them have kept coming back to the nation’s capital.
“Without any pre-existing knowledge, I ran into Mark Zuckerberg and Jensen from Nvidia,” he said at a conference on Friday, referring to Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang. “That never would’ve happened in my entire life before in DC, like zero chance.”
Rabois spoke onstage at the Venture in the Capital conference hosted at Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business. He previously lived in the Washington, DC, area while working as a lawyer and said he still visits to see family.
Rabois, a self-identified conservative, welcomed Trump’s victory in November’s election. He’s known in the tech world for his early role at PayPal.
Lately, the nation’s capital has been attracting more visits from big names in the tech world. Elon Musk has spent lots of time in DC over the past month as he oversees DOGE’s efforts to cut government spending from a perch adjacent to President Donald Trump’s administration.
Those kind of chance meetings with other high-profile figures can lead to new investment ideas or follow-ups that wouldn’t have otherwise happened, Rabois said.
But that doesn’t mean DC will become a hotspot for founders or venture capitalists looking to invest.
Being in DC is “unlikely to drive me to meet some undiscovered talent who’s going to create the next iconic company,” Rabois said.
“It definitely still is not where early-stage venture capitalists should be spending too much time,” Rabois said.
The Bay Area remains the place for startups to get noticed by venture capitalists in the US, Rabois said.
During the pandemic, some venture capitalists left the Bay Area in California for other parts of the US, seeking a change of pace. Rabois himself moved to Miami and became an evangelist for the city, trying to convince others from Silicon Valley to make the move.
But the rise of AI, including the growth of Sam Altman‘s OpenAI, has pulled many founders and venture capital players back to the Bay, Rabois said on Friday.
“If anything saves the Bay Area, it’s going to be this AI wave led by OpenAI,” he said.
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