58 Facts About Reid Hoffman

Reid Garrett Hoffman was born on August 5,1967 and is an American internet entrepreneur, venture capitalist, podcaster, and author.

Reid Hoffman is chairman of venture capital firm Village Global, a co-founder of Inflection AI, a co-founder of Manas AI, and a board member at Arc Institute.

Reid Hoffman has been an influential figure in political circles, being a member of the Bilderberg Group since at least 2011 and the Council on Foreign Relations since 2015.

Reid Hoffman has actively participated in political funding and advocacy, contributing to various campaigns and organizations, and has been a vocal proponent of democratic institutions and humanism in technological innovation.

Reid Hoffman was born on August 5,1967, in Palo Alto, California.

Reid Hoffman was a year old when his parents, who were both attorneys, got divorced.

Reid Hoffman was an avid table-top role-playing gamer as a child and worked as an editor at the game company Chaosium, then based in Oakland, California, near his home.

Reid Hoffman attended high school at the progressive Putney School in Vermont, where he engaged in farming activities.

Reid Hoffman graduated from Stanford University in 1990 with a Bachelor of Science in symbolic systems and cognitive science.

Reid Hoffman was awarded a Marshall Scholarship for graduate study abroad, and he earned a Master of Studies in philosophy from Wolfson College, Oxford, in 1993.

Reid Hoffman joined Apple Computer in 1994, where he worked on eWorld, an early attempt at building an online service.

Reid Hoffman later worked at Fujitsu before co-founding his first company, SocialNet.

Reid Hoffman was a member of PayPal's board of directors at the time it was founded.

In June 2000, Reid Hoffman became PayPal's Senior VP of Business Development, after a re-organization of PayPal's executive structure by then-CEO Elon Musk.

Reid Hoffman co-founded LinkedIn in December 2002 with two former colleagues from SocialNet and one former colleague from his time at Fujitsu.

At the time of LinkedIn's IPO on May 19,2011, Reid Hoffman owned a stake worth an estimated $2.34 billion, not including any potential benefits from Greylock Partners, where he was named a partner in 2009.

Reid Hoffman became a Microsoft board member on March 14,2017.

In 2016, Reid Hoffman was among the first donors to OpenAI, a non-profit artificial intelligence research organization established by Sam Altman, Elon Musk, and others.

Reid Hoffman led the investment into the for-profit subsidiary through his family foundation, and joined the company's board of directors.

On March 3,2023, Reid Hoffman resigned from his board seat at OpenAI, citing a desire to avoid conflicts of interest between his board seat at OpenAI, investments in AI technology companies via Greylock Partners, and role as founder of Inflection AI.

In March 2022, it was announced that Reid Hoffman was co-founding a new startup, Inflection AI, with his long-time friend and Greylock colleague Mustafa Suleyman, the co-founder of DeepMind.

In January 2025, Reid Hoffman launched Manas AI, an AI-enabled drug discovery startup, together with cancer researcher Siddhartha Mukherjee, with about $25 million in initial funding.

Since 2009, Reid Hoffman has provided venture capital to dozens of businesses across industries, including consumer and transportation technology, finance, and artificial intelligence.

Reid Hoffman served on Zynga's board of directors from March 2008 to June 2014 and currently serves on several public boards, including Aurora, Joby Aviation, and Microsoft.

Reid Hoffman has made multiple investments in transportation technology companies, including Aurora, Convoy, Nauto, Nuro, and Joby Aviation, among others.

An early advocate for cryptocurrency, Reid Hoffman led Greylock's 2014 Series A financing round in Xapo, a company that developed a bitcoin wallet product.

Reid Hoffman has invested in California Forever, a company developing a planned city in Solano County, California.

In 2023, Reid Hoffman delivered the Commencement Speech at Bologna Business School, urging students to prepare for the transformative potential of AI as a tool for amplifying human creativity, collaboration, and progress.

Reid Hoffman delivered a lecture at the LSE School of Public Policy focusing on the transformative impact of artificial intelligence on society, governance, and global dynamics.

Reid Hoffman was appointed a Visiting Senior Fellow at the school in February 2025.

Reid Hoffman is co-author, with Ben Casnocha, of the career book The Start-Up of You: Adapt to the Future, Invest in Yourself, and Transform your Career.

Reid Hoffman is co-author, with Ben Casnocha and Chris Yeh, of the management book The Alliance: Managing Talent in the Networked Age.

Reid Hoffman is co-author, with Chris Yeh, of the book Blitzscaling: The Lightning-Fast Path to Building Massively Valuable Companies.

On January 28,2025, Reid Hoffman released the book "Superagency: What Could Possibly Go Right With our AI Future" with his co-author Greg Beato.

Reid Hoffman is an avid player of board games, including Settlers of Catan, and has said that such games are good training for business.

In 2019, it was reported that Reid Hoffman had hosted a dinner attended by Jeffrey Epstein along with Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg.

In September 2023, the Wall Street Journal reported that Reid Hoffman visited Epstein's private island for a weekend in 2014.

Reid Hoffman claimed that the purpose of the meeting was to raise funds for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and that he regretted interacting with Epstein.

In July 2024, the Washington Post reported that Reid Hoffman had made a multimillion-dollar investment in the election technology company Smartmatic, which is currently undertaking defamation action against several press outlets.

Reid Hoffman is on the board of Lever for Change, an affiliate of the MacArthur Foundation, which connects donors with problem solvers to find and fund bold, effective solutions to accelerate social change.

Reid Hoffman serves on the advisory council of the MIT Media Lab and is a supporter and chair of the advisory board for QuestBridge.

In 2013, Reid Hoffman provided a $250,000 matching grant to Code for America.

In July 2016, Reid Hoffman funded the $250,000 cash-prize MIT Media Lab MIT Disobedience Award, an award created by Reid Hoffman and Joi Ito to honor and recognize acts of disobedience resulting in positive social impact.

Reid Hoffman is a long-time supporter of Second Harvest of Silicon Valley.

Reid Hoffman is on the board of the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence, whose mission is to "advance AI research, education, policy and practice to improve the human condition", and launched the institute's Hoffman-Yee Research Grants to "fund interdisciplinary teams with research spanning HAI's key areas of focus: understanding the human and societal impact of AI, augmenting human capabilities, and developing AI technologies inspired by human intelligence".

Reid Hoffman is listed as a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, to which he was elected in 2015.

In 2014, Reid Hoffman donated $150,000 to the Mayday PAC.

In 2016, Reid Hoffman contributed $220,000 in support of Democratic candidate for Vermont governor Matt Dunne, according to a mass-media disclosure filed at the Vermont Secretary of State's Office.

In 2016, Reid Hoffman created a card game modeled after Cards Against Humanity intended to poke fun at US presidential candidate Donald Trump.

In December 2018, the New York Times broke a story alleging that Reid Hoffman had "put $100,000 into an experiment that adopted Russia-inspired political disinformation tactics on Facebook" during the 2017 special Senate race in Alabama, which allegedly targeted Roy Moore voters.

In 2018, Reid Hoffman helped fund Alloy, a company founded to legally exchange data with affiliated Democratic groups like super PACs.

Reid Hoffman supplied half of the $35 million to start it.

Reid Hoffman has been an outspoken proponent of democratic institutions and voting rights and in 2021 published a piece on LinkedIn entitled Protecting Voting Rights: Good for America, Good for American Business.

In 2020, Reid Hoffman penned a piece that argued for making Voting Day a holiday.

Reid Hoffman gave at least $500,000 to the Mainstream Democrats super PAC, which was founded in February 2022 and has since spent more than $1 million supporting the campaigns of moderate Democrats Henry Cuellar and Kurt Schrader.

In October 2022, Reid Hoffman joined the Defense Innovation Board, an independent advisory board for the United States Department of Defense.

Reid Hoffman criticized Democratic donors who froze their campaign donations in the aftermath of Biden's performance at the June 2024 debate against Donald Trump.

Reid Hoffman stated in an interview his desire that a potential Harris administration remove Lina Khan as Federal Trade Commission chair.