President-Elect Donald Trump has picked Sriram Krishnan, an Indian-American venture capitalist, as senior policy advisor for AI at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. Krishnan was a general partner at Silicon Valley-based venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) and a former product leader at Twitter.
A statement by Trump said Krishnan will "help shape and coordinate AI policy across government, working with the president’s council of advisors on science and technology."
Krishnan acknowledged the offer, stating he was "honoured to be able to serve our country and ensure continued American leadership in AI." "Thank you, Donald Trump, for this opportunity."
Born in Chennai, Krishnan is an Information Technology graduate of Anna University who began his career with Microsoft in 2007 as a program manager for Visual Studio. His career later took him to Twitter, Yahoo!, Facebook, and Snapchat, where he pioneered the platform's ad tech, setting the stage for its IPO.
Krishnan and his wife Aarthi Ramamurthy shot to prominence in 2021 as the hosts of the podcast "The Aarthi and Sriram Show" (which was then called the "Good Time Show"). He was appointed a general partner at a16z in February 2021, and in 2023, was selected to lead the firm’s London office, its first non-U.S. location. He left in late November after rumours began to circulate that he was in talks with Elon Musk to join the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), an informal advisory board spearheaded by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy. Krishnan has a close relationship with Muskwith whom he worked to rebuild Twitter (now X) following Musk’s acquisition of the company in 2022.
Views on AI
Krishnan has been open about his views of AI trends. An opinion piece he wrote in The New York Times stressed on a "fundamentally different mechanism for websites to "exchange" value with OpenAI’s ChatGPT and other AI-powered chatbots.
"Some industry experts believe the answers are in legal action and older sites forming content alliances. As a technologist, my hope is that the answers lie in code rather than lawyers and that we see creative technology solutions to help keep the internet open."