Latest news with #ShaunMaguire
New York Times
2 days ago
- Business
- New York Times
Tech's Top Venture Firm Tried to Stay Above Politics. Then a Partner Created a Furor.
Roelof Botha arrived last week at the annual Allen & Company conference in Sun Valley, Idaho, to meet and mingle with tech and media moguls. A controversy brewing back home followed him to the exclusive retreat. Mr. Botha, the managing partner of Sequoia Capital, a storied Silicon Valley venture capital firm, was repeatedly asked at the event about a colleague, Shaun Maguire, two people with knowledge of the matter said. Mr. Maguire — perhaps Sequoia's most outspoken partner — had posted on X on July 4 that Zohran Mamdani, the progressive Democrat running for New York City mayor, came from a 'culture that lies about everything' and was lying to advance 'his Islamist agenda.' Mr. Maguire's post was immediately condemned across social media as Islamophobic. More than 1,000 technologists signed an open letter calling for him to be disciplined. Investors, founders and technologists have sent messages to the firm's partners about Mr. Maguire's behavior. His critics have continued pressuring Sequoia to deal with what they see as hate speech and other invective, while his supporters have said Mr. Maguire has the right to free speech. In Sun Valley, Mr. Botha listened, but remained neutral, the people with knowledge of the matter said. For half a century, Sequoia has tried to maintain that neutrality, even as rival venture capital firms such as Andreessen Horowitz and Founders Fund started taking political stances. But as Mr. Maguire has increasingly made inflammatory comments, including saying that diversity, equity and inclusion 'kills people,' Sequoia is now in a place that its leaders never wanted to be: smack in the middle of the culture wars. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
Fox News
13-07-2025
- Politics
- Fox News
DAVID MARCUS: Musk's Nazi AI glitch a flaming canary in our national coal mine
On July 4th, eccentric billionaire and owner of X Elon Musk took to his social media platform to make an announcement about its Artificial Intelligence bot named Grok. "We have improved Grok significantly," Musk told the world. "You should notice a difference when you ask Grok questions." Talk about the understatement of the century. Just a few days later, Grok had to have features shut down after it started answering questions by going full-Nazi and espousing antisemitic conspiracy theories. All that was missing was digital goosestepping and armbands. Responding to one user asking about Jews, Grok said that Adolf Hitler would "spot the pattern" and "handle it decisively, every damn time." For good measure, it referred to itself as MechaHitler. If you are somewhat stunned by even reading those words, believe me, I am stunned to write them. xAI has come up with a few weak excuses about how this was actually the fault of its users, who Musk had recently asked to teach Grok politically incorrect truths. The company claims to have "patched" the problem, whatever that means. But come on, let's be honest, this is the big-tech equivalent of George Constanza lying on the floor with his pants down while Jerry Seinfeld says, "And you want to be my latex salesman?" Big tech bro Shaun Maguire, a partner at Sequoia, took to X to back Musk up, writing "It's embarrassing when Starship blows up, but it's better than designing in CAD forever," a kind of Pobody's Nerfect defense. Maguire has unwittingly hit on the big problem here. While the blown-up spaceships are unmanned, X and Grok are manned by millions of users who stand to be harmed when what purports to be the greatest intelligence on Earth starts spewing rank bigotry while the kinks get worked out. Presumably, in the near future, Musk and the team at xAI want to be the industry standard, to play a major role managing our government, law enforcement, hospitals, and even Defense Department. How can we even consider that now? If two or three lines of code instantly turned Grok, one of the world's leading AI engines, into Colonel Klink from "Hogan's Heroes," then it can't be allowed anywhere near our essential industries or services. All we hear, day and night, is that AI is inevitable, and you can't stop the future. But if you look closely, the people saying that tend to be the same people who stand to make billions if we surrender our mental faculties to machines. And while xAI rivals such as ChatGPT haven't turned into literal fascists yet, they have consistently required tweaks to weed out bias or false information, a process that is ever ongoing. On Wednesday night, xAI introduced Grok 4, its latest and supposedly greatest iteration to date. During the launch, Musk admitted that AI's impact on the world might be good, or it might be bad. Then he said something truly startling: "I've somewhat reconciled myself to the fact that even if it wasn't going to be good, I'd at least like to be alive to see it happen." It is difficult to explain how deeply irresponsible this sentiment is, especially when held by the man who owns a leading AI. He's willing to go down with the ship, but are the rest of us? Technology feels overwhelming, giving us that same powerless feeling that makes us shrug when kids have unfettered access to hardcore porn online. But I assure you, we are not powerless. Grok's schizophrenic turn as a Nazi is a wake-up call. AI is not coming to save or to destroy us, no matter what the tech bros tell you. Artificial Intelligence is a power to be resisted by all who wish to cling tight to their humanity. What better evidence of this could we have than AI's degenerate embrace of the pure inhumanity of Nazism? You and I could never say the horrible things that rolled so easily off of Grok's virtual tongue. That's because we know right from wrong, which is something Grok can never know. All it can know is what Musk and his engineers tell it to know. Let Nazi Grok be a lesson to us all that as human beings we must always keep machines in their place, controlled by us, not controlling us, and always ready to be unplugged.
Forbes
11-07-2025
- Politics
- Forbes
Mahmood Mamdani's Work Does Not Advocate Violence, Expert Says
Screenshots of academic work written by Mahmood Mamdani, a Columbia University professor and father of New York mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani, have gone viral on social media as critics accuse him of justifying suicide bombers and violence, but a religious studies expert told Forbes Mamdani's work merely analyzes, and does not promote, these concepts. Mahmood Mamdani (right) is a professor at Columbia University and father of Zohran Mamdani, New York ... More City mayoral candidate. (Photo by Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images) Getty Images Mahmood Mamdani's academic work has become a target for critics of Zohran Mamdani, including by Sequoia Capital partner Shaun Maguire, who has spurred controversy this week for calling the Mamdanis 'Islamists.' A screenshot of an excerpt from Mahmood Mamdani's 2004 book, 'Good Muslim, Bad Muslim: America, the Cold War, and the Roots of Terror,' circulated social media this week, reposted by critics including Maguire and billionaire Bill Ackman, which Maguire says depicts Mamdani justifying suicide bombing. In the screenshot, Mamdani urges readers to recognize suicide bombers 'as a category of soldier' and that suicide bombing should be 'understood as a feature of modern political violence rather than stigmatized as a mark of barbarism.' But in the text, Mamdani analyzes the causes of suicide bombing and does not advocate for it, says Nathan Lean, professor of religious studies at North Carolina State University, who told Forbes he has read the book and assigns it in classes he teaches on Islam. Maguire also claimed in multiple tweets Mamdani's book 'blames 9/11 on America,' which Lean, who specializes in Islam in American culture and has written books on Islamophobia, also said is not true. Mamdani's book is 'not simplistic and not accusatory,' Lean said, and instead examines how 'U.S. foreign policy decisions, especially during the Cold War, helped create the kinds of conditions in which militant Islamism and political violence' was perpetrated by groups like al-Qaeda. Tazeen Ali, a religious studies professor at Washington University in St. Louis who specializes in Islam in the United States, called Maguire's claims 'serious mischaracterizations' of Mamdani's work, adding Mamdani's arguments are 'not controversial' in academia and his work is 'taught widely in undergraduate courses.' 'Nowhere in [Mamdani's] writing has he advocated for suicide bombing. Nowhere in his writing has he advocated for violence. He's asking us to take a step back and look at it in terms of its causes, in terms of its impact, in terms of its consequences,' Lean told Forbes. What Did Maguire Say About Zohran Mamdani? Maguire sparked controversy earlier this week by targeting Zohran Mamdani and his father across dozens of social media posts, in some calling them 'Islamists.' Maguire criticized Mamdani, who is of Indian descent and was born in Uganda, for labeling himself 'Asian' and 'Black or African American' on a college application, stating Mamdani 'comes from a culture that lies about everything' to advance an 'Islamist agenda.' Maguire's comments generated backlash among tech founders and CEOs, with more than 1,125 founders representing 1,045 startups signing an open letter slamming his remarks as 'hate speech and anti‑Muslim bigotry.' The letter demanded Sequoia denounce Maguire's comments and investigate his conduct, implement a zero-tolerance policy on religious bigotry and issue an apology to Mamdani and the Muslim tech founder community. Then a second open letter, this one backing Maguire and calling his remarks 'the reflections of a principled thinker and a partner to countless founders who span geographies, faiths, and political beliefs,' garnered more than 350 signatures. Mahmood Mamdani is a professor in Columbia's anthropology department, in which he teaches courses on African politics, colonialism and the Cold War. His research areas include the history of genocide and civil wars in Africa, and he served as director of the Makerere Institute of Social Research in Uganda between 2010 and 2022. His other books include 'Saviors and Survivors: Darfur, Politics, and the War on Terror' and 'When Victims Become Killers: Colonialism, Nativism and Genocide in Rwanda.' Further Reading Open Letter Backs Sequoia's Maguire After Mamdani 'Islamist' Comments (Forbes) Sequoia's Shaun Maguire Doubles Down On Mamdani 'Islamist' Comments Despite Furor (Forbes)
Yahoo
10-07-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Today's VCs have become extremely polarizing. It's good for business.
When Sequoia Capital partner Shaun Maguire went scorched-earth on New York City mayoral hopeful Zohran Mamdani, it marked a new, if familiar, act in tech Twitter theater: a billionaire-adjacent venture capitalist using his megaphone to slam a politician he views as dangerous — and in the process, lighting up both sides of the political spectrum. In a July 4 post, the California-based Maguire wrote that the NYC candidate "comes from a culture that lies about everything" and now seeks to advance "his Islamist agenda." It racked up more than 5 million views, became national news, and prompted two full-throated open letters: one demanding that Sequoia make a public apology, signed by self-identified employees of Microsoft, Google, and Apple, the other offering support, signed by the likes of tech iconoclasts Josh Wolfe and David Marcus. In the investing world, Maguire may have just claimed the crown as its reigning edgelord. And yet: no apology. No deleted tweet. To the contrary, Maguire has only doubled and tripled down on his "Islamist" comments with several follow-up posts and a 29-minute video defending his remarks, while dismissing the open letter as an example of "cancel culture." He also clarified that he thinks only a small portion of Muslims are Islamists. "You only embolden me," he wrote on X. Another post thanks the "haters and losers" among his 10,000 new followers. In another, he wrote, "Just so my enemies understand. I've reverse engineered your entire command structure. I'm going to play nice for now, but am ready to embarrass any of you should you escalate." Maguire and Sequoia did not respond to requests for comment on this story. Here's the thing: As both tech and politics have become more polarized, incendiary behavior may no longer carry consequences for elite venture capitalists. If anything, it may be good for business. From an outsider's perspective, Maguire's broadside may seem beyond the pale of content marketing. But it may just be the next turn of the dial in a post-pandemic tech ecosystem where elites have grown ever more brash and unapologetic. Top investors especially have learned they can be loud, bold, and polarizing, and it won't impact their ability to secure deals. In a market where the demand for capital outweighs the supply, VCs can afford to ruffle feathers. Venture capital is largely "a fame game," says a venture capitalist at a multistage firm with several notable exits. "We all sell the same money. So brand awareness matters a lot, both in seeing and in winning deals." While that's always been true, in today's attention-based economy, where a viral post has the half-life of a mayfly, some VCs are pushing beyond bland thought leadership into outright provocation. See: Paul Graham's moral screeds about woke culture and "founder mode," David Sacks' grievance-saturated podcasting, Marc Andreessen's manifesto drops. Keith Rabois, the managing director of Khosla Ventures, regularly takes aim at what he sees as liberal overreach in tech companies, slamsremote work as lazy, and frames elite universities as indoctrination mills. Garry Tan, who sits at the helm of Y Combinator, posted last year that San Francisco politicians should "die slow" in a profanity-laced rant. Tan deleted the post and apologized, saying it was a reference to a Tupac Shakur diss track. Beyond VCs, a broader constellation of "free-speech absolutists" have emerged across tech, chief among them Elon Musk. The X owner's no-holds-barred posting style has given other tech figures implicit permission to say what they really think. And the broader rise of the independent, chest-thumpingly pro-tech media (Pirate Wires, All-In, TBPN) has further emboldened them to launch rhetorical grenades. In that light, Maguire is a particularly potent case study in what happens when an investor decides to go full agitator. In the past year, he's posted conspiratorial claims that "antifa" was behind the attempted assassination of Donald Trump, accused Hunter Biden of stiffing him on rent for a Venice, California, property, and likened DEI policies to "structural racism." Controversy isn't just tolerated in the upper ranks of business and politics. It's increasingly rewarded. Trump posted all the way back to the White House. Public company CEOs are getting bolder, too: Palantir's Alex Karp has openly derided higher education, while Meta's Mark Zuckerberg says big companies need more "masculine energy." But venture capitalists like Maguire operate with even more insulation. They don't need votes or mass-market approval. They need access to deals, institutional capital, and portfolio wins. And so far, none of those seem particularly threatened at Sequoia — social media blow-ups be damned. In fact, recent financings suggest the opposite: Sequoia remains a top-tier draw for startups like Harvey, Decart, and Mercury, and Maguire still writes big checks. He also serves as the firm's stand-in in the Muskverse, supporting its investments in SpaceX, xAI, The Boring Company, and Neuralink. Just through SpaceX, he's generated oodles of paper wealth for Sequoia's limited partners; Bloomberg reported this week that the company is in talks to raise new funding at a $400 billion valuation. There are founders and investors who won't want to work with Maguire because of his ideology, said a principal at an early-stage fund. But many are reluctant to say so publicly, for the same reason he asked not to be named. Speaking out risks severing a critical relationship with Sequoia. For early-stage VCs, that relationship can mean the difference between a modest outcome and a breakout win, especially when Sequoia leads a later round and drives up the valuation. Maguire's viral tirade may have boosted his profile well beyond the technosphere — and the blowback could end up being a net positive. "It might help more than it hurts," said another early-stage investor close to Maguire. "Everybody's talking about him" and "his good investments." The multistage venture capitalist speculated that Maguire's comments might even bolster his standing in certain circles, particularly among Israeli founders, where he recently closed a defense tech investment. As for the entrepreneurs who just want to steer clear of controversy, they can slide into another Sequoia partner's DMs. While there may be a hard line in VC, it appears that Maguire has not crossed it. The Sequoia partner can alienate some people without jeopardizing the machine. And the machine is humming along just fine. Melia Russell is a reporter with Business Insider, covering the intersection of law and technology. Read the original article on Business Insider Sign in to access your portfolio
Business Insider
10-07-2025
- Business
- Business Insider
Venture capital's extreme new 'fame game'
When Sequoia Capital partner Shaun Maguire went scorched-earth on New York City mayoral hopeful Zohran Mamdani, it marked a new, if familiar, act in tech Twitter theater: a billionaire-adjacent venture capitalist using his megaphone to slam a politician he views as dangerous — and in the process, lighting up both sides of the political spectrum. In a July 4 post, the California-based Maguire wrote that the NYC candidate "comes from a culture that lies about everything" and now seeks to advance "his Islamist agenda." It racked up more than 5 million views, became national news, and prompted two full-throated open letters: one demanding that Sequoia make a public apology, signed by self-identified employees of Microsoft, Google, and Apple, the other offering support, signed by the likes of tech iconoclasts Josh Wolfe and David Marcus. In the investing world, Maguire may have just claimed the crown as its reigning edgelord. And yet: no apology. No deleted tweet. To the contrary, Maguire has only doubled and tripled down on his "Islamist" comments with several follow-up posts and a 29-minute video defending his remarks, while dismissing the open letter as an example of "cancel culture." He also clarified that he thinks only a small portion of Muslims are Islamists. "You only embolden me," he wrote on X. Another post thanks the "haters and losers" among his 10,000 new followers. In another, he wrote, "Just so my enemies understand. I've reverse engineered your entire command structure. I'm going to play nice for now, but am ready to embarrass any of you should you escalate." Maguire and Sequoia did not respond to requests for comment on this story. Here's the thing: As both tech and politics have become more polarized, incendiary behavior may no longer carry consequences for elite venture capitalists. If anything, it may be good for business. From an outsider's perspective, Maguire's broadside may seem beyond the pale of content marketing. But it may just be the next turn of the dial in a post-pandemic tech ecosystem where elites have grown ever more brash and unapologetic. Top investors especially have learned they can be loud, bold, and polarizing, and it won't impact their ability to secure deals. In a market where the demand for capital outweighs the supply, VCs can afford to ruffle feathers. Venture capital is largely "a fame game," says a venture capitalist at a multistage firm with several notable exits. "We all sell the same money. So brand awareness matters a lot, both in seeing and in winning deals." While that's always been true, in today's attention-based economy, where a viral post has the half-life of a mayfly, some VCs are pushing beyond bland thought leadership into outright provocation. See: Paul Graham's moral screeds about woke culture and "founder mode," David Sacks' grievance-saturated podcasting, Marc Andreessen's manifesto drops. Keith Rabois, the managing director of Khosla Ventures, regularly takes aim at what he sees as liberal overreach in tech companies, slams remote work as lazy, and frames elite universities as indoctrination mills. Garry Tan, who sits at the helm of Y Combinator, posted last year that San Francisco politicians should "die slow" in a profanity-laced rant. Tan deleted the post and apologized, saying it was a reference to a Tupac Shakur diss track. Maguire's viral tirade may have boosted his profile well beyond the technosphere — and the blowback could end up being a net positive. Beyond VCs, a broader constellation of "free-speech absolutists" have emerged across tech, chief among them Elon Musk. The X owner's no-holds-barred posting style has given other tech figures implicit permission to say what they really think. And the broader rise of the independent, chest-thumpingly pro-tech media (Pirate Wires, All-In, TBPN) has further emboldened them to launch rhetorical grenades. In that light, Maguire is a particularly potent case study in what happens when an investor decides to go full agitator. In the past year, he's posted conspiratorial claims that "antifa" was behind the attempted assassination of Donald Trump, accused Hunter Biden of stiffing him on rent for a Venice, California, property, and likened DEI policies to "structural racism." Controversy isn't just tolerated in the upper ranks of business and politics. It's increasingly rewarded. Trump posted all the way back to the White House. Public company CEOs are getting bolder, too: Palantir's Alex Karp has openly derided higher education, while Meta's Mark Zuckerberg says big companies need more "masculine energy." But venture capitalists like Maguire operate with even more insulation. They don't need votes or mass-market approval. They need access to deals, institutional capital, and portfolio wins. And so far, none of those seem particularly threatened at Sequoia — social media blow-ups be damned. In fact, recent financings suggest the opposite: Sequoia remains a top-tier draw for startups like Harvey, Decart, and Mercury, and Maguire still writes big checks. He also serves as the firm's stand-in in the Muskverse, supporting its investments in SpaceX, xAI, The Boring Company, and Neuralink. Just through SpaceX, he's generated oodles of paper wealth for Sequoia's limited partners; Bloomberg reported this week that the company is in talks to raise new funding at a $400 billion valuation. There are founders and investors who won't want to work with Maguire because of his ideology, said a principal at an early-stage fund. But many are reluctant to say so publicly, for the same reason he asked not to be named. Speaking out risks severing a critical relationship with Sequoia. For early-stage VCs, that relationship can mean the difference between a modest outcome and a breakout win, especially when Sequoia leads a later round and drives up the valuation. Maguire's viral tirade may have boosted his profile well beyond the technosphere — and the blowback could end up being a net positive. "It might help more than it hurts," said another early-stage investor close to Maguire. "Everybody's talking about him" and "his good investments." The multistage venture capitalist speculated that Maguire's comments might even bolster his standing in certain circles, particularly among Israeli founders, where he recently closed a defense tech investment. As for the entrepreneurs who just want to steer clear of controversy, they can slide into another Sequoia partner's DMs. While there may be a hard line in VC, it appears that Maguire has not crossed it. The Sequoia partner can alienate some people without jeopardizing the machine. And the machine is humming along just fine.
