Scott Kupor

He grew up in Houston, TexasTexasTexas is a U.S. state in the south-central United States, with its capital at Austin and its largest city Houston. It was admitted to the Union on December 29, 1845, as the 28th state, and the 2020 census (April 1, 2020) counted 29,145,505 residents.Open the full entry. A profile published by Fortune on September 19, 2025 gives his age at the time as 53 and calls him a “Houston, Tex. native.”⁠[1][2][3][4]

On Bloomberg Radio’s Masters in Business in 2019 he recalled that a family friend who ran studies on early cancer prevention at MD Anderson Hospital mentored him; he did research with him on detecting and preventing breast cancer, prostate cancer and similar diseases, and the friend gave him jobs over the summer. In his 2026 interview he said that he had been doing policy work since high school, when he worked for a group doing health care policy research on the economics of breast cancer screening.⁠[5][6][6]

In the same Masters in Business episode he said that he was not a reader growing up (“hated reading”) and that, when he was applying to college after his junior year of high school, an application essay asked about the last three books he had read, so he read three books that summer. His first car was a Peugeot 505 STI that was often in the shop.⁠[5]

He recalled that he applied to Stanford UniversityStanford UniversityStanford University is a research university in California founded by Leland and Jane Stanford in 1885 and opened in 1891.Open the full entry and to Harvard UniversityHarvard UniversityHarvard University is a private research university in Massachusetts, established by the Massachusetts Bay Colony legislature in 1636 and named in 1639 for early benefactor John Harvard. Its principal campuses are in Cambridge and the Allston and Longwood neighborhoods of Boston. It includes Harvard College, graduate and professional schools, and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. Two governing boards share oversight. Alan M. Garber was president as of October 2026, and the endowment stood at $56.9 billion at the end of fiscal 2025.Open the full entry out of high school and was admitted to neither, attended PennUniversity of PennsylvaniaThe University of Pennsylvania, commonly called Penn, is a private research university and Ivy League member in Philadelphia. It traces its origins to a 1740 charity-school project; Benjamin Franklin proposed his academy in 1749, classes began in 1751, and a 1791 merger established the institution under its present name. Penn has 12 schools, with undergraduate education concentrated in arts and sciences, engineering, nursing and Wharton. Enrollment totaled 29,384 in fall 2025, and the fiscal 2025 endowment was $24.81 billion. As of October 2026, J. Larry Jameson was president, with his term scheduled to end on June 30, 2027.Open the full entry for one year and then transferred to Stanford; he said that he “desperately wanted to go to Stanford.”⁠[5]

In 1993 he received a Bachelor of Arts from Stanford University; his degree was in public policy, and he graduated Phi Beta Kappa with honors and distinction.⁠[7][8][9]

Fortune’s profile states that he was a public policy major at Stanford University, that during his undergraduate and law school years he worked on behalf of the Japanese government at a policy institute, and that he later interned for the health care policy adviser Gail Wilensky during the George H. W. BushGeorge H. W. BushGeorge H. W. Bush (1924–2018) was an American politician who served as a Navy pilot in World War II and worked in the oil business before holding posts including U.S. representative, ambassador to the United Nations and director of the Central Intelligence Agency; he was vice president from 1981 to 1989 and the 41st president of the United States from 1989 to 1993.Open the full entry administration.⁠[4]

In his 2026 interview he said that at Stanford he worked for a professor, Alan Garber, on research into whether large populations of men should be screened for prostate cancer. The president’s biography on Harvard University’s website states that Alan M. Garber was a professor at Stanford, where he founded and directed the Center for Health Policy and the Center for Primary Care and Outcomes Research, and that he was named president of Harvard University on August 2, 2024.⁠[6][10]

Fortune’s profile states that he was part of a student group that sued Stanford in 1995 over its speech code and won, arguing that the code violated the First Amendment.⁠[4]

The statement that Stanford’s president, Gerhard Casper, made to the Faculty Senate on March 9, 1995 records that nine Stanford students filed the suit (Corry v. Stanford University) on May 2, 1994, and that on February 27, 1995 the Santa Clara County Superior Court held the university’s interpretation of its Fundamental Standard, which the statement calls the “Grey explication,” to be unconstitutionally overbroad and a viewpoint-based rule, and held CaliforniaCaliforniaCalifornia is a U.S. state on the Pacific coast; its capital is Sacramento and its largest city is Los Angeles. California was admitted to the Union on September 9, 1850, as the 31st state. Its population at the 2020 Census (April 1, 2020) was 39,538,223, the largest of any state.Open the full entry’s Leonard Law constitutional. Casper said in the statement that, barring unexpected language in the final judgment, the university should not appeal.⁠[11]

In 1996 he received a J.D. with distinction from Stanford Law SchoolStanford Law SchoolStanford Law School is Stanford University’s law school. Its law curriculum began in 1893, and it offers JD and advanced law degrees. Its alumni include technology-media entrepreneur Michael Arrington.Open the full entry; he is a member of the State Bar of California.⁠[7][8][12]

In the prepared statement he submitted to the U.S. Senate in 2025 he wrote that, except for one year in which he clerked for Judge Jerry Smith of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, he had spent nearly his entire professional career in the technology industry, starting as an investment banker advising technology companies on financings and acquisitions.⁠[2]

In his 2026 interview he said that during law school he also assisted Jay Bhattacharya, then a researcher at Stanford, doing modeling for a policy group. An article in The Harvard Crimson identifies Jay Bhattacharya as director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and as a former professor of medicine at Stanford.⁠[6][13]

From 1997 to 1999 he was an associate at Lehman Brothers, and from 1999 to 2000 an associate at Credit Suisse First Boston. His faculty biography at the Stanford Graduate School of Business states that at the two investment banks he represented software companies in financing and mergers-and-acquisitions transactions.⁠[7][8]

In his prepared statement he wrote that he met Marc AndreessenMarc AndreessenMarc Andreessen is an American entrepreneur and venture capitalist, a co-founder and general partner of the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz (a16z). While in college he helped develop the graphical web browser Mosaic, then co-founded Netscape and Loudcloud (later renamed Opsware), and has long served as a director of Meta; he has also published essays such as “Why Software Is Eating the World.”Open the full entry and Ben HorowitzBen HorowitzBen Horowitz is an American entrepreneur, venture capitalist and business author who co-founded Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) with Marc Andreessen in 2009. He previously led Loudcloud’s transition into Opsware and its 2007 sale to Hewlett-Packard. His writing and investing address startup management, organizational culture and the relationship between technology and cultural industries.Open the full entry in September 1999, when they were starting a technology company called Loudcloud, that he went on to lead domestic and global functions there, including finance, engineering, international business development and field operations, and that he helped take the company public in 2001. His faculty biography at the Stanford Graduate School of Business dates his time at Opsware Inc. to 2000–2007, in multiple executive roles, and says that he led the company’s private financing and its 2001 initial public offering, started its Asia Pacific operations and led its multiple acquisitions; the author biography on Andreessen Horowitz’s website and his NACD speaker biography specify that at Opsware he was senior vice president of global field operations, vice president of financial planning and vice president of corporate development. Chairman Paul of the Senate committee said in introducing him at the hearing that he joined the web-hosting business in 2000 and led a variety of operating functions there until the company was acquired in 2007.⁠[2][7][12][8][1]

On Masters in Business in 2019 he recalled that Loudcloud started in 1999, raised a great deal of money and hired many people before the market turned; the company went public in 2001 because that was the best source of capital available at the time, and the other technology company to go public that year was, as he remembered it, Storage Networks. He said that the company was called Loudcloud when it went public in 2001 and was the predecessor of Opsware.⁠[5]

In the episode he spoke of Andy RachleffAndy RachleffAndy Rachleff is a co-founder and former general partner of Benchmark and a co-founder of Wealthfront.Open the full entry, whom he described as one of the founders of Benchmark and the original investor in Loudcloud and Opsware.⁠[5]

In his 2026 interview he said that Michael OvitzMichael OvitzMichael Ovitz is an American Hollywood agent and businessman, a co-founder of the talent agency Creative Artists Agency (CAA), which he chaired from 1975 to 1995, and was once regarded as one of the most powerful figures in Hollywood. He briefly served as President of The Walt Disney Company from 1995 to 1996, and his severance gave rise to shareholder litigation lasting nearly a decade; he later headed Artists Management Group and turned to technology investing and advisory work.Open the full entry sat on the board of Loudcloud and Opsware, which is how he came to know Ovitz.⁠[6]

In his prepared statement he wrote that the company was sold to Hewlett Packard (HP) in 2007 for $1.6 billion. His faculty biography at the Stanford Graduate School of Business states that he joined HP in 2007 and was vice president and general manager of Global Support Delivery and Software-as-a-Service from 2007 to 2009.⁠[2][7]

On Masters in Business he said that he ran the integration of the two companies together with an executive on the HP side; HP was buying the company as a growth opportunity, so its people had the opportunity to stay, and most did. He said that an integration turns on how the question of who has a job is put to the employees.⁠[5]

In his prepared statement he wrote that at HP he led the global support business of HP Software, a $1 billion business with 1,300 team members.⁠[2][1]

In his 2026 interview he said that after the sale a group of people including him had to stay at HP for another 12 to 18 months. He was living in North CarolinaNorth CarolinaNorth Carolina is a state in the South Atlantic region of the United States; its capital is Raleigh and its largest city is Charlotte. One of the original 13 states, it ratified the U.S. Constitution on November 21, 1789, becoming the 12th state, and its population in the 2020 census was 10,439,388.Open the full entry at the time, because the company had earlier acquired a business there and Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz had asked him to move out to run it. His prepared statement mentions a brief stint living in Cary, North Carolina.⁠[6][6][2]

In his 2026 interview he recalled that in the summer of 2008 Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, who had been angel investing with their own money, decided to raise outside capital and set up an institutional firm, and asked him to join; Lehman Brothers went bankrupt that September. He said that he hesitated for a long time and agreed only after the two sent him emails around Christmas pressing him to decide; he went home and announced to his wife that he was going to quit his job at HP and join the two of them.⁠[6][6][6]

He said that his own calculation at the time was that the two would manage to raise a first fund, that such funds last a long time and would carry the firm through the financial crisis, and that in the worst case he would find another job. The family accordingly moved from North Carolina back to the San Francisco Bay Area.⁠[6][6]

He said that the two still joke that, had he agreed sooner, his surname would have been part of the firm’s name, and that his official title is “first employee,” not co-founder. In his 2025 prepared statement he put it that in 2009 the two invited him to start a new venture capital business with them, and his biography on OPM’s website says that he “helped build” the firm “from its inception in 2009.” The financial disclosure he filed with the U.S. Office of Government Ethics (OGE) in 2025 dates the start of his position as managing partner of AH Capital Management, LLC to June 2009.⁠[6][2][3][14]

He recalled that the firm then consisted of the two founders and that there was no job description: the two said that they would invest and that he needed to figure out everything else required to build a firm. His first tasks included buying furniture, making sure there was food in the office and opening bank accounts.⁠[6]

He said that on his very first day the firm needed to call capital from its limited partners for an investment; he did not yet have a company email address, so he sent the notice to about 50 limited partners from his personal Gmail account. One of them wrote back demanding to know who he was and telephoned the two founders to say that someone was impersonating them and asking for money. Only then did he set up an address on the firm’s own domain.⁠[6][6]

He said that his first days were mostly spent hiring: finance staff first, and then, following the firm’s “services” idea, specialists in areas such as talent and business development who would build networks for entrepreneurs. By his account the firm began with three people and had about 700 in 2026. His faculty biography at the Stanford Graduate School of Business states that the firm had three employees and $300 million in assets under management at its inception in 2009.⁠[6][6][7]

He said that the model drew on what Michael Ovitz had done at CAA, where the work once done by a single agent was split up so that specialists across the whole agency served one client; Andreessen Horowitz likewise split up the general partner’s job and hired professionals whose only work was to run networks in talent, government relations, sales and marketing and the like. He said that he often called Ovitz for advice in the early days; that at its first meeting with limited partners the firm summed up the idea as an effort to “institutionalize” the personal network of John Doerr of Kleiner Perkins, whom Kleiner Perkins’s website lists as its chairman; and that after an entrepreneur had pitched the firm, it would bring the whole team in for a “reverse pitch” to the entrepreneur.⁠[6][6][6][6][6][6][15]

He recalled that in the firm’s early years a few of them would sit in Marc Andreessen’s office at the end of the day drinking bourbon and talking without a set agenda, sometimes for 15 minutes and sometimes for an hour; he called it the one part of the day that had no formal agenda.⁠[6][6][6]

He said that the two founders took no salary at the start of the firm so that as much of the management fees as possible could go to him for hiring non-investing staff.⁠[6]

He recalled that in the first few months after the first fund closed, the firm joined Silver Lake in the purchase of Skype from eBayeBayeBay Inc. is an online marketplace company headquartered in San Jose, California, United States, founded in 1995 by Pierre Omidyar; it started out with person-to-person online auctions and listed on Nasdaq in 1998. As of the end of 2025, it had 135 million active buyers, and its platform’s gross merchandise volume in 2025 was nearly $80 billion.Open the full entry. The transaction resembled a buyout and was clearly different from the early-stage venture strategy the firm had presented to investors, although it had hinted at the deal to its limited partners beforehand. He said that the deal was criticized at the time and that there was a dispute between Skype’s original founders and eBay over who owned the core intellectual property, which Silver Lake resolved by finding a way to work with the founders. The announcement eBay issued on November 6, 2009 states that the investor group led by Silver Lake, which included Andreessen Horowitz and the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, settled with Joltid Limited, that Joltid and Skype’s founders, Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis, joined the investor group, and that Skype received ownership of all the software previously licensed from Joltid; the deal valued Skype at $2.75 billion and left Silver Lake and the other investors with 56 percent, eBay with 30 percent, and Joltid and the two founders with 14 percent.⁠[6][6][6][6][16]

He said that about 18 months later Skype was sold to MicrosoftMicrosoftMicrosoft is a technology company founded by Bill Gates and Paul Allen in 1975 and headquartered in Redmond, Washington, with businesses spanning Windows, Microsoft 365, Azure, enterprise software, artificial intelligence, gaming and devices.Open the full entry for four times what the firm had paid, and that the firm returned about half of the fund to its limited partners within 18 months; Nicira, a networking company backed by the first fund, was also acquired early, and its cofounder, Martin CasadoMartin CasadoMartin Casado is a computer scientist, entrepreneur and venture capitalist who is a general partner at Andreessen Horowitz, where he leads infrastructure investing. A major proponent of software-defined networking, he co-founded Nicira and served as its chief technology officer, and after VMware acquired the company he ran its networking and security business; he also co-founded the nonprofit MuralNet.Open the full entry, later became a partner at the firm. Martin Casado’s biography on Andreessen Horowitz’s website states that Nicira was acquired by VMware for $1.26 billion in 2012. In his view these early results allowed the firm to raise its second fund well ahead of plan, and the stacked management fees paid for building out the services team.⁠[6][6][6][17]

He said that the firm opened in 2009 in the middle of the financial crisis, when other venture firms were preoccupied with their existing portfolio companies and Sequoia CapitalSequoia CapitalSequoia Capital is a venture capital firm founded by Don Valentine in 1972, investing from the seed stage through the growth stage. Its historical investments include Apple, Cisco, Google, YouTube, Airbnb, and Stripe; in 2021 it introduced the Sequoia Capital Fund structure, which can continue to hold public securities, and in 2023 its regional businesses became independent brands and partnerships.Open the full entry had circulated its “RIP Good Times” presentation, which gave the new firm an advantage.⁠[6][6]

He said that venture capital firms traditionally did no marketing, because in an era of scarce capital entrepreneurs came to them anyway; Andreessen Horowitz had no track record to point to, so the two founders decided to tell the firm’s story publicly and to position it as a new kind of firm offering capital plus a whole network of services, for which it drew a good deal of criticism from other firms on Sand Hill Road.⁠[6][6][6][6][6]

His OGE financial disclosure lists the board positions he took up in these years: board member of the nonprofit Genesys Works Bay Area from October 2012; board member of the software company SnapLogic and of the Silicon Valley Community Foundation from January 2014; board member of St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital from June 2014; and board member of Stanford Health Care from January 2017. The form marks all of these positions as uncompensated.⁠[14]

From 2017 to 2018 he chaired the board of the National Venture Capital Association (NVCA). Federal News Network’s article of December 2024 notes that his LinkedInLinkedInLinkedIn is a social networking platform for professionals. It was founded in 2002 by Reid Hoffman and others, launched in 2003, and listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 2011; after Microsoft acquired it for approximately $26.2 billion in 2016, it became a wholly owned Microsoft subsidiary. Its revenue comes from membership subscriptions, advertising, and recruitment solutions.Open the full entry profile gives the term as 2014 to 2018. His biography on OPM’s website says that he has testified before Congress and federal regulatory bodies on issues related to economic growth and innovation.⁠[7][9][3]

In his 2026 interview he said that when the two founders first asked him to handle everything except investing, his ego was hurt for a while; he came to accept that early-stage technology investing requires a very granular understanding of the technology, which is not his strength.⁠[6][6]

He said that the firm began with a centralized structure in which all operating functions, and in effect the investors as well, came under him, and that it ran this way for about ten years, until it had roughly 500 people. The firm then moved to smaller investing teams organized by domain (his examples were a crypto fund, an American Dynamism fund run by David Ulevitch and a bio team), with the operating services distributed among those domains and only a few functions, such as legal, finance and investor relations, kept central. David Ulevitch’s biography on Andreessen Horowitz’s website states that he leads the firm’s American Dynamism practice. He said that the reorganization shrank his remit and hurt his ego a second time, and that the two founders made clear to him that this was no judgment on his work but a change in what the business needed.⁠[6][6][6][6][6][18]

He said that in 2019 the firm started a later-stage venture fund and brought in David GeorgeDavid George (a16z)David George is a venture capitalist and general partner at Andreessen Horowitz (a16z). After joining from General Atlantic in 2019, he built and leads a16z’s growth-stage investing practice, leading or participating in investments in companies such as SpaceX, OpenAI, Stripe, Roblox and Databricks.Open the full entry from General AtlanticGeneral AtlanticGeneral Atlantic is a global investment firm founded in 1980 that grew out of Chuck Feeney’s family investment business. Growth equity is at its core, and through GA Credit, BeyondNetZero and Actis it also invests in credit, the energy transition and infrastructure. As of June 30, 2026, its assets under management across all strategies were about $130 billion.Open the full entry, and that he began investing alongside David George with a focus on health care, in companies judged more on their operating performance than in zero-to-one early-stage projects. By the time he left the firm for government, he said, he had invested in about 15 companies and sat on the boards of about 10 of them.⁠[6][6]

His OGE financial disclosure dates the start of his position as a lecturer at the Stanford Graduate School of Business to January 2019. The school’s faculty page lists him as Lecturer in Management (from 2020) and as a Faculty Affiliate of the Grousbeck-Holloway Center for Entrepreneurial Studies; the course he teaches, STRAMGT 354, “Entrepreneurship and Venture Capital,” is listed for every academic year from 2019–20 onward.⁠[14][7]

The author biography on Andreessen Horowitz’s website states that he is co-founder and co-director of the Stanford Venture Capital Director’s College and that he teaches venture capital and corporate governance at Stanford Law School and at the Haas School of Business and the Boalt School of Law of the University of California, BerkeleyUniversity of California, BerkeleyThe University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley) is a campus of the University of California system; the University of California was founded in 1868 through a merger of two institutions and moved to Berkeley, California, in 1873.Open the full entry.⁠[19]

On June 4, 2019 his book Secrets of Sand Hill Road: Venture Capital and How to Get It was published by Portfolio, an imprint of Penguin Random HousePenguin Random HousePenguin Random House is a trade book publishing group headquartered in New York City. It was formed on July 1, 2013, by combining Bertelsmann’s Random House with Pearson’s Penguin, and has been wholly owned by Bertelsmann since 2020. Its roots include Random House, which grew out of Bennett Cerf and Donald Klopfer’s 1925 purchase of The Modern Library and became a general publisher in 1927, and Penguin Books, founded by Allen Lane in 1935. The group operates in more than 20 countries with more than 300 imprints, including Alfred A. Knopf, Doubleday, Viking, Dutton, Penguin Press, Crown and Ballantine Books, and had revenue of €4.981 billion in 2025. In 2022 a U.S. federal court blocked its planned acquisition of Simon & Schuster on antitrust grounds. Its chief executive is Nihar Malaviya.Open the full entry, with a foreword by Eric Ries; the hardcover runs to 320 pages, and the publisher’s page describes the book as a Wall Street JournalThe Wall Street JournalThe Wall Street Journal is a U.S. news publication founded in 1889, with a focus on business, finance and economics. It is published by Dow Jones, part of News Corp.Open the full entry bestseller.⁠[20]

On Masters in Business that year he said that he wrote the book to “demystify” venture capital, because entrepreneurs do not stand on a level playing field where information is concerned. He said in the episode that the firm had started with three people ten years earlier and by then had 170 employees and 15 partners, with about 100 people working with companies after investment; he said that his nickname inside the firm was “Slash,” because he had a lot of jobs, among them fundraising, and that the firm had just raised about $3 billion and had just over $10 billion under management.⁠[5]

The description of an episode that the Capital Allocators podcast released on September 1, 2019 states that he then sat on four nonprofit investment committees.⁠[21]

His OGE financial disclosure lists the company boards he joined from 2020 onward: Cedar (from June 2020), Foursquare (from September 2020), Labster (from February 2021), Headway (from March 2021), Ultima GenomicsUltima GenomicsUltima Genomics is a U.S. DNA sequencing technology company founded in 2016 by Gilad Almogy that develops high-throughput, low-cost sequencing platforms built on silicon wafers.Open the full entry (from May 2021), Journera (May 2021 to May 2023), Infinitus (from May 2022), Pearl Health (from January 2023), Tanium (from January 2024), Talkiatry (from April 2024) and Formation Bio (from June 2024). Apart from Journera, he still held all of these positions when he filed; the form marks them all as uncompensated.⁠[14]

The same form shows that from June 2022 he was a board member of the investment manager MIO Partners, a compensated position, and that he was a board member of the nonprofit GIIN from January 2021, of the Rhodes Trust from March 2021 and of the Heartland Whole Health Institute from October 2024. Fortune describes the Heartland Whole Health Institute as a nonprofit founded by Alice Walton in 2019.⁠[14][14][22]

A later author biography on Andreessen Horowitz’s website calls him an investing partner who invests in growth-stage bio and health care companies and leads the firm’s investor relations and growth initiatives, and says that the firm’s assets under management grew from about $300 million to more than $30 billion. At his Senate hearing in April 2025 he said that over 15 years the firm had grown from three people and a single $300 million fund to more than 600 people and $45 billion in assets.⁠[12][1]

Fortune’s profile states that he was introduced to Howard Lutnick, co-chair of the presidential transition, through Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, and that on December 16, 2024 he went to Mar-a-Lago to be interviewed by Donald TrumpDonald TrumpDonald Trump (born 1946) is an American politician and businessman, a Republican who ran the real estate company the Trump Organization and starred in the television series The Apprentice. He served as the 45th president of the United States from 2017 to 2021 and has been the 47th president since 2025.Open the full entry and the chief of staff, Susie Wiles; he arrived as a press conference held by Masayoshi SonMasayoshi SonMasayoshi Son (born 1957) is a Japanese entrepreneur and investor who founded SoftBank Group in 1981 and has served as its chairman and CEO ever since. He is known for early investments in Yahoo and Alibaba, the acquisitions of Sprint and Arm, the nearly $100 billion SoftBank Vision Fund, and in recent years his bets on OpenAI and AI infrastructure.Open the full entry with Trump was wrapping up, and the interview was repeatedly pushed back, for about five hours in all, while Trump worked on a TikTok deal. Government Executive writes that he obtained the post after responding to a general call for applicants during the transition and that he was also interviewed by Steve Davis, a former operational head of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).⁠[4][23]

He wrote on his OPM blog that, before his interview with Trump, he announced to his three daughters that he intended to pitch the president on “making government cool again”; they liked the idea but not its acronym, MGCA.⁠[24]

In his 2026 interview he said that when Trump asked during the interview why he was qualified, one of the reasons he gave was that he was not using the post to compete for any other public or private job, that he would do what he thought was right, and that he could be fired if he got it wrong.⁠[6][6]

Trump’s team announced the choice of Kupor for OPM director in a press email on a Sunday evening, and Trump said in a statement, “Scott will bring much needed reform to our federal workforce.” Fortune dates the selection to December 2024; in his 2026 interview he recalled it as coming around the first week of December.⁠[9][22][6]

He said that in December and early January, before the inauguration, he spent time with Elon MuskElon MuskElon Musk is an entrepreneur who founded SpaceX and has long served as chief executive of Tesla; he also took part in creating PayPal, OpenAI, Neuralink, The Boring Company, and xAI. He acquired Twitter in 2022, and his businesses span spaceflight, electric vehicles, energy, artificial intelligence, and social media.Open the full entry, Steve Davis and others from DOGE and developed plans with them for what to do once the administration changed; he was then instructed to stop communicating with them until his nomination process was complete, so he was not in office on the first day, and the plans were carried out from what later became his own office.⁠[6][6][6]

He filed his nominee financial disclosure with OGE under his full name, Scott Aaron Kupor; he signed the form on January 16, 2025, and OPM’s ethics official and OGE certified it on April 1, 2025.⁠[14]

The form lists, for the period it covers, salary and bonus of $2,537,996 from AH Capital Management, LLC, director fees of $300,000 from MIO Partners, lecture fees of $73,406 from the Stanford Graduate School of Business and royalties of between $5,001 and $15,000 from his book Secrets of Sand Hill Road.⁠[14]

The section of the form on employment agreements and arrangements records a severance agreement with AH Capital Management dated March 2025, under which the firm pays him $305,000 within 30 days of signing and agrees to accelerate the vesting of his unvested carried interest in a number of funds upon his separation, before he enters government service; he continues to participate in the firm’s defined contribution retirement plan, to which the firm makes no further contributions after his separation.⁠[14]

The form also lists him as co-trustee of the 2010 Kupor Family Trust (from January 2010) and of the 2021 Kupor Descendants Irrevocable Trust (from January 2021), and lists his positions as managing member of 32 fund entities, most of them in the AH Equity Partners and CNK Equity Partners series, all of which end in December 2024.⁠[14]

The section of the form on other assets and income lists a holding in the Fidelity California AMT Tax-Free Money Market Fund valued at between $25,000,001 and $50,000,000; the individual stocks valued at between $5,000,001 and $25,000,000 are AirbnbAirbnbAirbnb is a travel platform for booking stays, experiences, and services, co-founded by Brian Chesky, Joe Gebbia, and Nathan Blecharczyk and headquartered in San Francisco, United States; its Class A common stock trades on Nasdaq under the symbol ABNB. The business began with hosting guests in the founders’ home in 2007, then joined YC’s Winter 2009 batch, and gradually expanded into local experiences, services, and boutique hotels.Open the full entry, CoinbaseCoinbaseCoinbase is a U.S. operator of crypto asset trading platforms, founded in 2012 by Brian Armstrong and Fred Ehrsam, whose listed parent is Coinbase Global, Inc.; it went public through a direct listing on Nasdaq (ticker COIN) in April 2021 and joined the S&P 500 in May 2025. It provides crypto trading, custody, staking, and stablecoin-related services, launched USDC with Circle, develops the Ethereum layer-2 network Base, and acquired the crypto options exchange Deribit in 2025; its venture investing operates as Coinbase Ventures.Open the full entry, Microsoft and Samsara.⁠[14]

On April 1, 2025 he wrote to Andrew Kloster, the designated agency ethics official at OPM, setting out the steps he would take to avoid conflicts of interest if confirmed. The letter states that upon confirmation he would resign from his position at AH Capital Management, LLC; that he had already resigned as managing member of 32 Andreessen Horowitz fund entities and would retain his equity and his vested and unvested carried interests in 38 funds solely as a passive investor; that AH Capital Management had agreed to accelerate the vesting of his unvested carried interest before his appointment and that he would forfeit any carried interest still unvested on the date of his appointment; and that the severance payment had to be made before he assumed the duties of director or would be forfeited.⁠[25]

The letter states that upon confirmation he would resign from his positions with the Heartland Whole Health Institute, Formation Bio, Talkiatry, Tanium, Pearl Health, Infinitus, Cedar, Headway, Ultima Genomics, Foursquare, Labster, SnapLogic, the Rhodes Trust, St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital and Stanford Health Care, and that he had already resigned from his positions with GIIN, the Stanford Graduate School of Business, the Silicon Valley Community Foundation, Genesys Works Bay Area and MIO Partners. The letter also states that he would retain his positions as trustee of the 2010 Kupor Family Trust and the 2021 Kupor Descendants’ Irrevocable Trust and would receive no fees for his services as trustee during his appointment as director. Endnotes to Part 1 of the financial disclosure record the dates on which he left five positions: two in February 2025 and three in March 2025. Fortune wrote on April 3, 2025 that the letter was made public before the hearing and that a spokesperson for Andreessen Horowitz said his board seats would be covered by other people at the firm.⁠[25][14][22]

On assets, the letter states that as soon as practicable, and not later than 90 days after his confirmation, he would divest his stock in Microsoft Corp and Apple, Inc., his interests in RBC Belvedere Capital Fund LLC and Exchange Place: All Cap LP Class A, and the family trust and descendants’ trust assets listed in two attachments. The companies listed in the attachments are AlphabetAlphabetAlphabet is an American technology holding company formed in 2015 through a restructuring of Google, whose businesses include Google as well as companies in autonomous driving, life sciences, and early-stage technology investment. The group reports its businesses as Google Services, Google Cloud, and Other Bets.Open the full entry, AppleAppleApple is a public technology company founded in 1976 and headquartered in Cupertino, California, United States. Its business includes the iPhone, Mac, iPad, wearables, and services such as digital content, payments, and cloud storage. The company builds its product system through in-house hardware, operating systems, and services.Open the full entry, Accenture, AdobeAdobeAdobe (Adobe Inc.) is a software company headquartered in San Jose, California, founded in 1982 by John Warnock and Charles Geschke. Known for PostScript, PDF and creative software such as Acrobat, Photoshop, Illustrator, Premiere Pro and After Effects, it moved its main creative products to Creative Cloud subscriptions from 2013 and expanded into digital marketing and generative AI; it is listed on Nasdaq under the ticker ADBE.Open the full entry, Akamai Technologies, Amazon.comAmazonAmazon is a publicly traded U.S. technology and retail company founded by Jeff Bezos in 1994, with its principal corporate offices in Seattle. Its businesses span e-commerce, logistics and fulfillment, digital advertising, membership and entertainment services, consumer electronics, and Amazon Web Services cloud computing.Open the full entry, Arrow Electronics, CitigroupCitigroupCitigroup Inc. is a global diversified financial services holding company based in New York, with a history dating back to 1812.Open the full entry, CACI International, Cisco SystemsCiscoCisco Systems, Inc. is an American networking technology company, incorporated in 1984, headquartered in San Jose, California, and listed on Nasdaq.Open the full entry, Dell Technologies, Walt Disney, Fox Corp, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, HP Inc, International Business MachinesIBMIBM (International Business Machines Corporation) is an American information technology company, renamed in 1924 from the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company (C-T-R).Open the full entry, Lockheed MartinLockheed MartinLockheed Martin is an American aerospace and defense company whose main businesses include military aircraft, missile defense, rotary-wing aircraft and mission systems, and space systems.Open the full entry, Marriott InternationalMarriott InternationalMarriott International, Inc. is an American lodging company that franchises, operates and licenses hotel, residential, timeshare and other properties; at year-end 2025 its system had 9,805 properties in 145 countries and territories.Open the full entry, Microsoft, Northrop Grumman, NetApp, Open Text, Southern Co, AT&TAT&TAT&T (AT&T Inc.) is a telecommunications company headquartered in Dallas, Texas. Its predecessor was SBC Communications, a regional holding company created in the 1984 breakup of the Bell System; SBC merged with the original AT&T Corp. in 2005 and adopted its name, and it has since operated a nationwide wireless network and fiber broadband, at one time also owning DIRECTV and WarnerMedia.Open the full entry, Thomson ReutersThomson ReutersThomson Reuters (Toronto Stock Exchange and Nasdaq symbol TRI) is a content and technology company headquartered in Toronto, Canada, that provides information, software, and AI products to professional fields including legal, tax, accounting, compliance, government, and media, and owns the news agency Reuters. The company was formed after The Thomson Corporation acquired Reuters Group PLC in 2008, and Woodbridge, the Thomson family’s private investment company, is its controlling shareholder.Open the full entry, Tyler Technologies, United Parcel Service, Verizon CommunicationsVerizonVerizon (Verizon Communications Inc.) is one of the largest telecommunications carriers in the United States, formed in 2000 through the merger of Bell Atlantic, one of the “Baby Bells,” and GTE. Headquartered in New York City, it operates a nationwide wireless network, Fios fiber broadband and communications services for businesses and government, and is listed on the New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq.Open the full entry, Zoom Communications, Salesforce and Science Applications International Corp. The letter also states that he would retain his financial interests in MIO Special Situations Fund LLC and would be recused from particular matters that would have a direct and predictable effect on his financial interests in the health care field, including all particular matters involving the Federal Employees Health Benefits program.⁠[25]

On January 20, 2025 the U.S. Senate received his nomination from the president; the Daily Digest of the Congressional Record for that day records it as “Scott Kupor, of California, to be Director of the Office of Personnel Management for a term of four years,” and the Senate’s roll-call vote page numbers the nomination PN12-24.⁠[26][27]

On April 3, 2025 the U.S. Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs held a hearing on his nomination to be director of OPM (S. Hrg. 119-43), together with that of Eric M. Ueland. In introducing him, Chairman Paul said that he was a graduate of Stanford University and Stanford Law School, that in 2009 he joined Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz to start a venture capital firm, that he sat on the boards of health care technology startups and that he had written a book on the venture capital industry.⁠[1][1]

In his opening statement he said that the United StatesUnited StatesThe United States is a federal country in North America made up of 50 states, the District of Columbia as the seat of government, and territories such as Puerto Rico and Guam; its capital is Washington, D.C. The Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. The 2020 census (April 1, 2020) counted a resident population of 331,449,281, and the 435 seats of the House of Representatives are apportioned among the states on the basis of the census.Open the full entry was on an “unsustainable fiscal path,” with $36 trillion in federal debt growing by about $2 trillion a year. He cited the fact that 69 percent of federal employees were rated above average and only 0.4 percent below average, a distribution that he said “simply defies logic”; his prepared statement gives the figures as 60 percent rated above “meeting expectations” and 0.4 percent rated “below expectations.” He said that he had led organizations ranging from teams of 5 to 10 people to a 1,300-person, globally distributed business of $1 billion a year.⁠[1][2]

The priorities set out in his prepared statement include addressing the fiscal problem in a “surgical” and transparent way that respects federal workers; building a system for recruiting, developing and managing talent that rewards innovation, merit and measured risk-taking over tenure; changing a performance management system in which ratings cluster at the top; explaining the reasons for decisions during restructuring; and attracting talent from universities, community colleges, trade schools and the private sector.⁠[2]

The senators who questioned him were Johnson, Peters, Moody, Hassan, Lankford, Kim, Moreno, Gallego, Hawley, Slotkin and Ernst. He said, “I will 100 percent comply with all laws and with the Constitution”; he said, “OPM does not have the authority to actually go in and to do firing”; he declined to comment on things that had already happened, on the ground that he was not yet in the role, and said that restructuring requires “transparency and communication.” When Chairman Paul asked the two nominees whether they had a preconceived notion that federal employees are all bad, he answered, “No, I do not.”⁠[1]

On data privacy, he said that he would carry out a full business review that included data privacy and data protection; on federal employee unions, he promised an “open door”; asked about Elon Musk, he said that people in federal service should follow all the rules and regulations, including the Hatch Act, but that he did not know the specifics of the issues raised about Musk. Fortune writes that he said repeatedly at the hearing that federal employees should be treated in a way that “respects the dignity and humanity” of workers and that he declined to discuss the terminations at agencies; Government Executive writes that he generally equivocated when asked about the workforce reduction plans, including the deferred resignation program, the mass firing of probationary employees and large-scale layoffs.⁠[1][22][28]

On April 9, 2025 the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs took up his nomination to be director of OPM at a business meeting; the committee record states that the committee decided by roll-call vote to send the nomination to the Senate with a favorable recommendation, and gives the result as 7 yeas and 4 nays.⁠[29]

On July 9, 2025 the U.S. Senate first invoked cloture by a vote of 51 to 46 and then confirmed him as director of OPM by a vote of 49 to 46, with five senators not voting; Lisa Murkowski of Alaska was the only Republican senator to vote against.⁠[30][27][28][31]

The same day NVCA issued a statement in which its president and chief executive, Bobby Franklin, said, “Scott Kupor has a real talent for scaling organizations and leading with vision.” Max Stier, president and chief executive of the Partnership for Public Service, had praised the choice when it was announced in December 2024; after the confirmation he said that Kupor’s business leadership made him “a solid candidate” but that how he would lead OPM “remains to be seen.” On April 6, 2026 Stanford Lawyer, the alumni magazine of Stanford Law School, carried a notice of its alumnus’s confirmation.⁠[32][28][33]

His biography on OPM’s website states that he was sworn in as director of OPM on July 14, 2025; the news release OPM issued on July 15 says that he was sworn in that day, and E&E News likewise writes that he officially assumed the role on Tuesday, July 15.⁠[3][31][34]

In the release he said, “I am honored by the Senate’s confirmation and grateful to President Trump for entrusting me with this opportunity to serve,” and said that he would focus on the stewardship of taxpayer resources and on a workplace culture that rewards innovation and performance. Chuck Ezell, who had been acting director, stayed at OPM as a transitional senior adviser.⁠[31][35]

On July 18, 2025 he launched a weekly blog on OPM’s website, “Secrets of OPM,” whose name alludes to his background in venture capital. In the first post he described himself as a proud Texan who wears cowboy boots in the office and as a fan of country music; he also wrote that he had managed reductions in force in the private sector, and he thanked the federal employees affected by the cuts for their service.⁠[36][37]

Meeting reporters on July 21, 2025, shortly after taking office, he said that OPM “is its own agency” and would make its own decisions. He proposed to make operational efficiency a core priority for OPM and for the government as a whole, said that he was drafting an internal memo built around the phrase “OPM equals other people’s money,” and named preparing the federal workforce to adopt AI as his third goal.⁠[23]

Government Executive wrote after the briefing that OPM had 322 fewer employees than at the start of Trump’s second term and that, once voluntary separations were completed at the end of the year, it would fall from 3,110 employees to about 2,000, nearly 130 of them through layoffs; OPM had about 1,200 contractors at the start of 2025 and aimed to halve that number by the end of 2026. He said that OPM was reviewing gaps in its services: “I’m quite certain that we may have... made some mistakes where we need to hire back some people.”⁠[23]

On August 29, 2025, in the blog post “Why Bother?”, he worked through the federal finances: an annual budget of about $7 trillion, a deficit of about $2 trillion and accumulated debt of about $36 trillion. He wrote that there were about 2.4 million civilian employees at the start of the year and that, on agency plans, the number would fall to about 2.1 million by year-end, with about 80 percent of the reductions voluntary, mostly through the Deferred Resignation Plan (DRP), which offered eight months of paid leave; OPM itself expected to cut its headcount by about one-third, or roughly 1,000 employees, and its contractors from about 1,300 to fewer than 500, saving nearly $300 million in all; a government-wide reduction of about 300,000 employees could save close to $35 billion a year.⁠[38]

On September 15, 2025 OPM issued a final rule on performance management in the Senior Executive Service (SES). In his blog post of the same day, “Sorry, Not Everyone Gets an A,” he wrote that the SES has about 8,000 members, rated on a scale of 1 to 5, of whom about 96 percent receive a 4 or a 5 and about 64 percent a 5; the new rule repeals the prohibition on forced distributions, so that from fiscal year 2026 no more than 30 percent of SES members may receive a 4 or a 5, and separate OPM guidance calls for that 30 percent to receive at least 60 percent of annual bonuses and other rewards.⁠[37][39]

On September 19, 2025, in the blog post “200 Feet Underground,” he described OPM’s retirement operations center in a former limestone mine at Boyers, in Butler County, PennsylvaniaPennsylvaniaPennsylvania (officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania) is a Middle Atlantic state of the United States; its capital is Harrisburg, and Philadelphia and Pittsburgh are its two great metropolitan areas. One of the original 13 states, it ratified the U.S. Constitution on December 12, 1787, the second state to do so. Its population in the 2020 census (April 1, 2020) was 13,002,700.Open the full entry: about 600 federal employees process thousands of retirement claims there each month, largely by hand and on paper; the mine was excavated by U.S. Steel in 1902, converted in the 1960s into a secure document-storage facility and given its retirement operations in the early 1970s; it holds about 26,000 file cabinets and about 400 million pieces of paper. He wrote that three modernization efforts, in the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s, cost taxpayers an estimated $130 million and failed; that the federal government has more than 115 separate human resources IT systems that do not communicate with one another and cost about $2 billion a year; and that Joe GebbiaJoe GebbiaJoe Gebbia is an American designer and entrepreneur and a co-founder of Airbnb. In 2007, he and Brian Chesky founded AirBed & Breakfast, the predecessor of Airbnb; in 2022, he stepped down from his full-time operating role at Airbnb and joined Tesla’s board; since 2025, he has served as U.S. Chief Design Officer, leading the White House’s National Design Studio.Open the full entry, a co-founder of Airbnb whom Trump appointed as the first U.S. Chief Design Officer, leads the redesign of the front end of the retirement process.⁠[40]

Fortune’s profile of September 19, 2025 states that he expected 300,000 federal jobs to be eliminated by the end of 2025 and that he said about 90 percent of the cuts so far were resignations, early retirements or buyouts instead of layoffs. He said that DOGE as a centralized organization “doesn’t exist in that form anymore,” described OPM’s work as implementing and institutionalizing what Musk’s group had started, and declined to judge DOGE’s earlier decisions: “it’s not constructive for me to try to Monday morning quarterback that.” The article adds that he was considering ending the Combined Federal Campaign because of its administrative costs and that he planned to start a podcast.⁠[4]

In the same article Ben Horowitz called him “the hardest working man in the business” and said, “He was our very first hire at a16z, because he is the best executive that we’ve worked with.”⁠[4]

The OGE periodic transaction report (Form 278-T) that he signed on September 26, 2025 lists one sale of Microsoft Corp. stock on September 25, 2025, in the range of $5,000,001 to $25,000,000, with the endnote “Sale pursuant to a CD issued by OGE based upon a required divestiture”; OPM’s ethics official certified the report on October 6 and OGE on November 25.⁠[41]

On November 7, 2025, in the blog post “Risky Business (Done Right),” he used interim retirement pay to illustrate “measured risk”: OPM had used “stopper codes” to block, in certain cases, the interim payment of 80 percent of a retiree’s estimated benefit, in order to avoid overpayments; after OPM reviewed every such code, about 75 percent of retirement applicants received interim pay automatically, up from 30 to 40 percent. He remarked in the post that friends sometimes call him “cheap” and that he would prefer “frugal.”⁠[42]

On November 14, 2025, in the blog post “Shutdown Reflections,” he looked back on the federal government shutdown that had just ended: about 1.3 million civilian employees (about 62 percent) kept working and were paid, about 400,000 were furloughed and about 400,000 more were required to work without pay, so that about 800,000 went without paychecks for more than 40 days, and back pay for the 400,000 furloughed employees would cost about $5 billion. He called the shutdown “form over substance.”⁠[43]

On December 10, 2025 OPM and the Office of Management and Budget announced that more than 100 federal HR systems would be consolidated into a single platform. He said in the announcement, “For too long, taxpayers have footed the bill for duplicative HR systems that no modern organization would tolerate.”⁠[44][37]

On December 15, 2025 OPM announced the launch of the US Tech Force, a government-wide program to recruit technologists, introduced together with the Office of Management and Budget, the General Services Administration, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and other bodies. The initial private-sector partners were Adobe, Amazon Web ServicesAmazon Web ServicesAmazon Web Services (AWS) is the cloud computing business of Amazon. Launched in July 2002, it made its public debut with the Amazon S3 storage service on March 14, 2006, and has since added hundreds of services, including Amazon EC2; its segment net sales were about $46.0 billion in the third quarter of 2026.Open the full entry, AMDAMDAMD (Advanced Micro Devices, Inc.) is a publicly traded U.S. semiconductor company founded in 1969 and headquartered in Santa Clara, California; its stock trades on Nasdaq under the ticker AMD. The company develops CPUs, GPUs, FPGAs, adaptive systems-on-chip and related software, mainly for the data center, personal computer, gaming and embedded markets; its product brands include Ryzen, EPYC, Radeon and Instinct.Open the full entry, Anduril, Apple, BoxBoxBox is an American enterprise software company founded in 2005 by Aaron Levie, Dylan Smith and others, headquartered in Redwood City, California. It provides cloud content management, file sharing, collaboration, e-signature and AI content-processing tools, and went public on the New York Stock Exchange in 2015 under the ticker BOX.Open the full entry, C3.ai, Coinbase, Databricks, Dell Technologies, Docusign, Google Public Sector, IBM, MetaMetaMeta (Meta Platforms, Inc.) is a publicly listed American technology company, renamed from Facebook in 2021, that operates social communication, digital advertising, virtual reality, smart glasses and artificial intelligence businesses.Open the full entry, Microsoft, NVIDIANVIDIANVIDIA is an American semiconductor and computing technology company that provides graphics processing units, artificial intelligence infrastructure, networking interconnects, and computing software, and is listed on Nasdaq under the ticker NVDA.Open the full entry, OpenAIOpenAIOpenAI is an artificial intelligence research and product organization founded in 2015 that develops the GPT model series, ChatGPT, Codex and a developer API, and conducts research on image, speech, video and intelligent agents. After its 2025 restructuring, the nonprofit OpenAI Foundation continues to control the for-profit OpenAI Group PBC. Its growth has involved large-scale fundraising and compute partnerships, and has also been accompanied by controversies over governance, copyright, privacy and AI safety.Open the full entry, OracleOracleOracle (Oracle Corporation) is a U.S. enterprise software and cloud computing company founded in 1977 by Larry Ellison, Bob Miner, and Ed Oates. Starting with relational databases, it expanded into enterprise applications, cloud infrastructure, hardware, and industry systems, and broadened its product range through acquisitions of companies such as Sun Microsystems, NetSuite, and Cerner.Open the full entry, PalantirPalantirPalantir is a U.S. enterprise software company founded in 2003 that provides data and artificial intelligence platforms including Gotham, Foundry, Palantir Apollo, and AIP, serving government and commercial organizations. The company went public through a direct listing in 2020 and now trades on Nasdaq under the ticker PLTR.Open the full entry, RobinhoodRobinhoodRobinhood is a financial services brand co-founded in 2013 by Vlad Tenev and Baiju Bhatt; its publicly listed parent company is Robinhood Markets, Inc., headquartered in Menlo Park, California, United States. The company has grown from commission-free mobile securities trading into crypto assets, retirement accounts, and other financial services, and trades on Nasdaq under the symbol HOOD.Open the full entry, SalesforceSalesforceSalesforce is a U.S. enterprise software company headquartered in San Francisco, providing cloud applications, data platforms and AI agent tools centered on customer relationship management (CRM).Open the full entry, SAP, ServiceNowServiceNowServiceNow is an American enterprise cloud software company founded by Fred Luddy in 2004. It initially entered the enterprise market through IT service management and later expanded its workflow platform to employee service, customer service, security, and artificial intelligence applications. The company listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 2012 under the ticker symbol NOW.Open the full entry, Snowflake, Synopsys, UberUberUber is a technology company headquartered in San Francisco, United States, whose legal name is Uber Technologies, Inc. Co-founded by Garrett Camp and Travis Kalanick, it uses digital platforms to connect riders with drivers, delivery consumers with merchants, and shippers with carriers, with main businesses in Mobility, Delivery, and Freight. Dara Khosrowshahi has been chief executive officer since 2017.Open the full entry, WorkdayWorkdayWorkday is a US enterprise software company founded in 2005 by Aneel Bhusri and Dave Duffield; it provides cloud applications and AI agents for HR, finance and IT, is headquartered in Pleasanton, California, and is listed on Nasdaq under the ticker WDAY.Open the full entry, xAI and Zoom. He said in the announcement, “This is a clarion call.”⁠[45][37]

The next day, in the blog post “Making Government Cool Again,” he wrote that the Tech Force was to be an “elite corps” of 1,000 early-career engineers serving two-year terms and working directly with senior leaders of cabinet-level agencies, with career development programs, speaker series and training and certification from major technology companies during the term and an exclusive recruiting fair for private-sector jobs at its end. Private-sector employers would also supply engineering managers to lead the engineers.⁠[24]

OPM’s year-end announcement of December 31, 2025 states that about 317,000 federal employees were expected to leave government that year, more than 90 percent of them through voluntary programs and natural attrition, and that the deferred resignation program produced about 154,000 voluntary resignations; that only 68,000 new federal employees were hired during the year; and that OPM cut its own headcount by one-third and ended the Federal Executive Institute.⁠[46][37]

On February 5, 2026 OPM announced a final rule implementing Executive Order 14171 that establishes Schedule Policy/Career in the excepted service for a set of policy-influencing positions, which are no longer subject to the existing removal procedures. He said in the announcement, “Schedule Policy/Career restores a basic principle of democratic governance.”⁠[47][37]

At a Federal News Network event on March 5, 2026 he defended the rule, saying that it centers on “accountability,” not politicization, and that the job of career employees is to carry out the lawful actions that the president determines to be appropriate. He said that employees unwilling to pursue the administration’s policies could be removed and that the honorable course for such an employee was to resign; he also said that no one was being asked not to disagree with the president, which everybody has the right to do. Federal News Network writes that OPM’s analysis of the public comments found about 94 percent opposed to the rule and about 5 percent in favor.⁠[48]

On March 25, 2026 he gave opening remarks at a hearing of the U.S. House Appropriations Subcommittee on Financial Services and General Government, setting out three priorities: the right people in the right roles, a modernized workforce system and a high-performance culture. He said that more than 130,000 annuitants had used the online retirement application, that productivity in processing applications had doubled and processing times had fallen by more than half; that the government has more than 120 human capital systems and that more than 45,000 HR professionals spend significant time collecting data from outdated systems; and that 99.7 percent of employees are rated at or above expectations each year and only 0.3 percent below.⁠[49][37]

The summary of the hearing published by FEDmanager states that he said he would be “perfectly happy” to increase federal staff if the contractor workforce were cut; he called contractors a “shadow” workforce and said that some had worked for 5 to 20 years and were paid 25 to 100 percent more than federal employees. He said that digital retirement applications take about 30 to 40 days to process, against an average of about 90 days for paper ones, with a goal of 15 days, and that OPM aims to move all agencies onto a single human capital system by September 2027. In answer to Democrats who questioned the two-year terms, he said that young people no longer think in terms of 40-year careers.⁠[50]

On March 30, 2026 OPM, in partnership with the White House, launched the Early Career Talent Network (at EarlyCareers.gov) to recruit early-career talent for roles in finance, human resources, engineering, project management and procurement.⁠[51][37]

Fortune’s article of April 4, 2026 states that he wanted more people from the private sector to spend a few years in government and then return, and that he said he would not “dismiss” the resulting conflict-of-interest risks but thought that the benefit of diverse experience is often worth some risk; he said that OPM would add guardrails to the Tech Force, including keeping people who come from the private sector out of procurement decisions. The article notes that OPM rehired Amanda Scales, a former OPM chief of staff, to help scale the Tech Force, and that in the first year of Trump’s second term the federal government lost 386,826 employees while about 122,000 joined between January 2025 and January 2026, a net reduction of 264,000 in 2025.⁠[52]

During Public Service Recognition Week in May 2026 he was interviewed by Terry Gerton of Federal News Network and called it “an amazing time to be in public service”; WTOP writes that the Tech Force’s first hire started work in the week of the interview.⁠[53][37]

On June 8, 2026 OPM announced nine new industry partners for the Tech Force: Arista Networks, Armada, Cisco, Cognition AICognitionCognition is a U.S. artificial intelligence company founded by Scott Wu, Walden Yan and Steven Hao that develops the autonomous AI software engineer Devin. It launched Devin in March 2024, acquired the AI coding tool Windsurf in July 2025, and announced a Series E exceeding $2 billion at a $48 billion valuation in September 2026. Its annualized revenue passed $1 billion that month.Open the full entry, CognizantCognizantCognizant (Cognizant Technology Solutions Corporation) is a Nasdaq-listed information technology services and consulting company headquartered in Teaneck, New Jersey. Most of its employees are in India, and it is one of the major applicants for U.S. H-1B visas; in 2026, the U.S. Department of Labor suspended it from the Permanent Labor Certification (PERM) program, citing an investigation into visa fraud.Open the full entry, PaywardPaywardPayward (Payward, Inc.) is the parent company of the cryptocurrency exchange Kraken, founded in July 2011 by Jesse Powell and others and incorporated in Wyoming, United States. Its flagship is Kraken, and its other businesses include the futures brokerage NinjaTrader, the tokenized equities platform xStocks and the index company CF Benchmarks; it serves more than 190 jurisdictions and has been led since October 2024 by co-CEOs Arjun Sethi and Dave Ripley.Open the full entry, Moveworks from ServiceNow, Scale AI and Wiz.⁠[54][37]

On June 10, 2026 OPM announced that it had awarded the Core Human Capital Management (Core HCM) contract of the federal HR IT modernization program to Oracle. The new platform is to be implemented in phases, will serve about two million civilian employees of the executive branch and will replace the more than 100 systems the government now runs; OPM expects it to cut costs to taxpayers by more than 90 percent.⁠[55][37]

The OGE periodic transaction report (Form 278-T) that he signed on June 22, 2026 lists two sales of Okta, Inc. stock on June 18, 2026, each in the range of $1,000,001 to $5,000,000 and each annotated as a call option exercise; OPM’s ethics official certified the report on June 29 and OGE on July 23.⁠[56]

On July 1, 2026 OPM announced that the previous day had been the “Last Day of Paper”: more than 95 percent of federal retirement applications would no longer be processed on paper but through OPM’s Online Retirement Application, which had handled more than 155,000 retirement applications over the preceding year. OPM also committed to issuing a retiree’s first pension payment within seven days of retirement where a complete package is submitted by the separation date, and planned to digitize hundreds of millions of historical retirement records. He said in the announcement, “Today we’re closing the book on one of the federal government’s oldest paper processes.”⁠[57][37]

On September 14, 2026, in an interview with the commentator Benny Johnson, he said that he wanted the federal government to have more early-career people like Edward Coristine, a former DOGE staffer, and said, “I don’t need people like ‘Big Balls’ to give us 40 years of their life in the federal government.” Nextgov/FCW writes that the first stop on his college tour for federal recruitment was the University of Florida, where he was to hold a fireside chat with Johnson on September 15.⁠[58]

On October 14, 2026 OPM published his remarks on CNNCNNCNN (Cable News Network) is an Atlanta-based news organization founded by Ted Turner on June 1, 1980, as the world’s first 24-hour television news channel. It has been owned in turn by Turner Broadcasting System, Time Warner, AT&T and Warner Bros. Discovery, became part of Skydance Corporation along with Warner Bros. Discovery in October 2026, and is one of the five networks that rotate in the White House television pool.Open the full entry’s The Lead with Jake Tapper. He said on the program that Trump had put together the “Super Intelligence Force,” made up of himself and three others, Jay ClaytonJay ClaytonJay Clayton (Walter Joseph Clayton III) is an American lawyer and government official who has served as U.S. Director of National Intelligence since August 2026 and, from October of that year, also as the White House’s head of artificial intelligence affairs (“AI czar”). He practiced at Sullivan & Cromwell for more than two decades, chaired the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission from 2017 to 2020 and was U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York from 2025 to 2026.Open the full entry, Emil MichaelEmil MichaelEmil Michael is an American business executive and government official who was chief business officer of Uber from 2013 to 2017. Since May 2025 he has been U.S. Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering, also serving as the department’s chief technology officer and acting director of the Defense Innovation Unit.Open the full entry and Andrew Ferguson of the FTC; he said that the body was to work out a comprehensive set of policies and to set up a notification system through which companies would report security incidents involving models to the government, and that the Department of Labor would be addressing worker retraining. In the same month OPM also published his remarks on the same subject on FOX NewsFOX NewsFOX News is a U.S. television and digital news media brand centered on FOX News Channel and owned by Fox Corporation, with operations spanning news reporting, political commentary and digital content.Open the full entry, Fox Business and CNBCCNBCCNBC is an American business and financial news cable channel launched by NBC in 1989; it merged with its rival FNN in 1991 and since January 2026 has been part of Versant Media Group, spun off from Comcast.Open the full entry’s Squawk Box.⁠[59][37]

On October 19, 2026 OPM issued a final rule removing the governmentwide “time-in-grade” restriction, under which employees had to complete 52 weeks at a lower grade before they could be considered for promotion to positions at GS-6 and above; the rule takes effect on January 14, 2027, and the proposed rule was published on May 27, 2026. He said in the announcement, “The old rule made the calendar a gatekeeper.” In the blog post “Talent > Time” he wrote that earlier administrations had tried and failed to eliminate the restriction in June 1994 and November 2008, and that he was spending the fall on campuses making the case for public service.⁠[60][37][61][62]

On November 4, 2026 David SenraDavid SenraDavid Senra is the founder and host of the Founders podcast, on which he reads biographies of entrepreneurs to discuss starting and running businesses and making personal decisions. He began producing the show in 2016, partnered with Colossus in 2022, and in 2025 launched David Senra, a long-form interview show under his own name.Open the full entry published an interview with Scott Kupor on his YouTubeYouTubeYouTube is Google’s video-sharing and creator platform, founded in 2005 by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim and acquired by Google in 2006. Built around video uploading, viewing, and creator earnings, the platform has developed Shorts, YouTube Music, Premium, YouTube TV, and products for children, and is headquartered in San Bruno, California, United States.Open the full entry channel under the title “He Helped Build a16z & Is Now Rebuilding the Government | Scott Kupor.” The conversation begins with the founding of Andreessen Horowitz and moves in turn through how he came to join the firm and his first tasks there, what the firm borrowed from Michael Ovitz’s approach at CAA, daily life in the firm’s early years, the Skype investment and the second fund, marketing in the venture capital industry, and his move from operations to investing.⁠[6][6][6][6][6][6]

The second half of the interview turns to government. He explained why he entered it: policy work had always been on his bucket list, his children were by then all out of the house, the two founders supported his leaving, and he had the financial means to take a break from business; he also believed that what he had learned in venture capital could be applied in government. He described OPM as the human resources and talent agency for about two million civilian federal employees.⁠[6][6][6]

He said that the incentive structure of government puts avoiding mistakes ahead of everything else. When he first arrived, one of his reports said that their job was to keep him “out of the news,” so that he would not be called before Congress or made the subject of a report by the GAO or the inspector general, and he replied that this was not their job. He proposed the term “permissioned risk,” as distinct from the “permissionless risk” of Silicon Valley.⁠[6][6][6]

He said that historically 99.7 percent of federal employees have been rated 3 or above, and that of about 7,000 senior executives some 90 percent are rated 4 or 5. He said that OPM had put a rule in place under which no more than 40 percent of the population may be given the top rating and at least 60 percent of the compensation pool must go to that group, and that he personally would like to go further. The two figures differ from the roughly 8,000 executives and the 30 percent cap given in his blog post of September 2025.⁠[6][6][6][39]

He said that almost every promotion in government is gated by time in the job and that OPM was eliminating that requirement. As he described it, the Tech Force aims to bring in 1,000 software engineers, AI experts and data scientists for two-year terms, hired at the GS-14 level; applicants must pass a coding test administered by a third party, whereas in the past applicants rated their own skills on a questionnaire; the program works with 40 private companies and ends with a large job fair after the two years.⁠[6][6][6][6][6]

He said that 7 percent of the federal workforce is under the age of 30, against 23 percent of the total U.S. workforce, and that 44 percent is over 50, against about 33 percent nationally; if nothing were done, half of the workforce would retire within the next five to ten years. He said that OPM was about to visit some 40 college campuses, the first time it had gone to colleges to recruit. A manager had once complained to him that the government’s pitch had always been lifetime employment, and he answered that nobody under 30 thinks that way.⁠[6][6][6][6][6]

Taking as his example a software developer who joined DOGE at 19 without a college degree, he said that almost every government job description requires a degree and that under the old system such a person could only have been hired at the lowest grade, at about $40,000 a year; OPM’s policy, he said, is to measure ability through tests and assessments.⁠[6][6][6][6]

He said that there were about 2.3 million federal civilian employees on the day Trump took office and about 2 million at the time of the interview, a reduction of close to 300,000 that put the federal workforce at its lowest share of the labor force since around 1960. In his view, changing the direction of an organization of that size required a “big bang” approach, and people can argue about Musk’s tactics; he sees his own role as the long-term institutionalization of those changes.⁠[6][6][6][6]

He described the retirement operation in the mine at Boyers, Pennsylvania: roughly 100,000 to 200,000 people retire from government each year, and under the old process paper applications were mailed from office to office and finally to the mine, where 800 people in the retirement services organization made the calculations by hand, a process that took from 3 months to more than 12. He said that Elon Musk identified the problem and, with Joe Gebbia, started an automation project before he arrived, which he then took over. He said that OPM declared June 30 the last day on which paper would come into the mine, that processing time had already been cut by more than half with a goal of 90 percent, and that OPM commits to issuing a full retirement check within 15 days of a sound electronic application; OPM had bought two large digitization machines and would digitize all 400 million pieces of paper now in the mine.⁠[6][6][6][6][6][6][6][6]

He added that OPM was consolidating the government’s roughly 120 HR IT systems into a single one and that annual spending would fall from $2 billion to $40 million.⁠[6]

At the end of the interview he invited young people interested in a few years of government service to visit earlycareers.gov, or to follow him and OPM on X and send him a direct message.⁠[6][6]

As of November 2026 OPM’s website lists him as its director. The faculty page of the Stanford Graduate School of Business still lists him as Lecturer in Management and includes STRAMGT 354, taught by him, among the courses for the 2026–27 academic year.⁠[3][7]

At his Senate hearing in April 2025 he said that he and his wife, Laura, had been married for nearly 28 years and have three daughters. His prepared statement gives the daughters’ names as Ashlee, Lexi and Amanda; the hearing record prints the first of these as Ashley.⁠[1][2]

On the same occasion he said that he had mostly lived in Northern California for the better part of 35 years; his prepared statement says that he made his way there via Stanford University and that he had a brief stint back in Houston.⁠[1][2]

In his 2026 interview he said that his wife is far smarter than he is and that she often asks him what on earth he is doing.⁠[6]

On Masters in Business in 2019 he described himself as “the most introverted person,” who likes to sit on his couch and watch NetflixNetflixNetflix is a U.S. entertainment company that offers streaming series, films, games, and live programming, headquartered in Los Gatos, California. Founded in 1997, it grew from online DVD rental into an international subscription entertainment service and also runs original content, advertising, and in-person experience businesses.Open the full entry; he reads only nonfiction, and his favorite books include Robert Caro’s Master of the Senate and Edward Chancellor’s Devil Take the Hindmost. He said that he used to run marathons but stopped because of joint problems, and that he plays the guitar, not very well by his own account.⁠[5]

Fortune’s profile of September 2025 states that he has never supported any candidates financially and says that he has always been a fiscal conservative and, on other issues, “probably a libertarian in many ways,” and that his political leanings have “never really changed”; he also said, “I always thought I wanted to do something at some point in government service.” The profile adds that he gives his height as 5 feet 5 inches “on a good day,” with an extra inch when he wears his cowboy boots. In his 2026 interview he called himself “a small government guy.”⁠[4][6]

The description of Secrets of Sand Hill Road on Andreessen Horowitz’s website says that the book explains how venture capital works across the life of a startup, including how venture capitalists decide where and how much to invest, why most of them invest in only one startup per business category, why storytelling is a key fundraising skill, how to handle a down round, and what to do when venture capitalists become too involved in day-to-day operations.⁠[19]

The author biography on the same page says that he has appeared on CNBC and has written for The Wall Street Journal, Fortune, the Financial TimesFinancial TimesThe Financial Times (FT) is a London-based English-language business and financial news organization, known for its salmon-pink newspaper and its motto “Without Fear and Without Favour.” It was owned successively by the British Pearson group and Japan’s Nikkei Inc., and today digital subscriptions are its main source of revenue.Open the full entry and Bloomberg Opinion.⁠[19]

As of November 2026 the “Secrets of OPM” blog page on OPM’s website lists 66 posts, from the first, “OPM for the People.,” to “Free is good.”⁠[62]

The author biography on Andreessen Horowitz’s website states that he is vice-chair of the investment committee of St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. His faculty biography at the Stanford Graduate School of Business states that he is chairman of the board of Genesys Works and a member of the investment committees of Stanford Medical Center, the Silicon Valley Community Foundation and Lick Wilmerding High School. His biography on OPM’s website likewise mentions his service on several nonprofit boards, including that of St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.⁠[19][7][3]

He holds that organizations are not complicated: whether a government agency, a private company or a nonprofit, each is in essence a group of people aligned around the same set of objectives (video at 29:50).⁠[6]

The question to ask, he said, is whether incentives track the objectives: when people do what the organization wants them to do, they should be rewarded and recognized (video at 29:50).⁠[6]

He relayed the reasoning behind the firm’s founding: if you cannot compete on what others compete on, change the rules and compete on something else (video at 20:39).⁠[6]

He said that one should recognize what is not one’s strength and concentrate on what one can do (video at 22:13).⁠[6]

He argues for letting people take some risk, sized appropriately to the nature of the organization (video at 32:34).⁠[6]

He said that attracting great people requires holding low performers accountable and allowing differentiation (video at 35:15).⁠[6]

He said that anyone who innovates will not get it right every time (video at 55:51).⁠[6]

U.S. Office of Personnel Management: Official website: https://www.opm.gov/ (opens in a new window).⁠[3]

Andreessen Horowitz: Official website: https://a16z.com/ (opens in a new window).⁠[19]

National Venture Capital Association: Official website: https://nvca.org/ (opens in a new window).⁠[32]

Stanford Graduate School of Business: Official website: https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/ (opens in a new window).⁠[7]

X: Public account: https://x.com/skupor (opens in a new window).⁠[19][7]

LinkedIn: Public profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/scottkupor/ (opens in a new window).⁠[19][7]

Secrets of OPM: His weekly blog on OPM’s website: https://www.opm.gov/news/secrets-of-opm/ (opens in a new window).⁠[62]