President-elect Donald Trump has confirmed reports that Sriram Krishnan, until recently a general partner at Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), will serve as senior policy advisor on AI in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.
In a statement, Trump said Krishnan will “work with the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology to help shape and coordinate AI policy across the government.” And in a post about
“It is an honor to serve our country and help ensure America’s continued leadership in AI,” Krishnan wrote. “Thank you Donald Trump for giving us this opportunity.”
An entrepreneur and VC, Krishnan previously led product teams at Microsoft, Twitter, and Yahoo! (Disclosure: parent company of TechCrunch), Facebook, and Snap. He and his wife Aarthi Ramamurthy gained further prominence in 2021 as hosts of the podcast “The Aarthi and Sriram Show” (then called “Good Time Show”).
Krishnan has close ties to billionaire Elon Musk, and they worked together to rebuild Twitter (now X) after Musk acquired the company in 2022. Musk co-leads the Department of Government Efficiency, a policy group that recommends government restructuring and budget cuts. Federal spending.
We have some important announcements for President Trump’s technology team today! I look forward to working with:
— Michael Kratsios – Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) and Assistant to the President on Science and Technology.
— Dr. Lin… https://t.co/zai4a61VVC— David Sacks (@DavidSacks) December 22, 2024
Krishnan was appointed General Partner of a16z in February 2021 and was selected to lead the firm’s London office, its first location outside the U.S., in 2023. He left at the end of November.
Krishnan expressed some of his views on current AI trends in an op-ed he wrote for the New York Times last year. He called for a “fundamentally different mechanism” for websites to “exchange” value with OpenAI’s ChatGPT and other AI-based chatbots.
“The big internet sites are fighting AI models with the Internet equivalent of raising a castle drawbridge,” he said, citing user protests against Reddit and Stack Exchange and their platforms’ data licensing programs. “Some industry experts believe the answer lies in legal action and older sites forming content partnerships. As a technologist, I hope the answers lie in code, not lawyers, and that we can find creative technical solutions that help keep the Internet open.”
