Reid Hoffman

Reid Garrett Hoffman (born August 5, 1967) is an American Internet entrepreneur, venture capitalist, podcaster, and author. Hoffman is the co-founder and former executive chairman of LinkedIn, a business-oriented social network used primarily for professional networking. He is also chairman of venture capital firm Village Global, a co-founder of Inflection AI, a co-founder of Manas AI, and a board member at Arc Institute.

Hoffman has been an influential figure in political circles, a member of the Bilderberg Group since at least 2011 and the Council on Foreign Relations since 2015. He has actively participated in political funding and advocacy, contributing to various campaigns and organizations, and has been a vocal proponent of democratic institutions and humanism in technological innovation. As of May 2026, Forbes estimates his net worth to be $2.7 billion.

Hoffman was born on August 5, 1967, in Palo Alto, California. He was a year old when his parents, who were both attorneys, got divorced. Hoffman was an avid table-top role-playing gamer as a child and worked as an editor at the game company Chaosium, then based in Oakland, California, near his home.

Hoffman attended high school at the progressive Putney School in Vermont, where he engaged in farming activities. He graduated from Stanford University in 1990 with a Bachelor of Science in symbolic systems and cognitive science. He was awarded a Marshall Scholarship for graduate study abroad, and he earned a Master of Studies (MSt) in philosophy from Wolfson College, Oxford, in 1993.

His paternal great-great-great-grandfather was Theophilus Adam Wylie, a Christian Presbyterian minister and Indiana University president pro tempore. Hoffman's uncle, Eric Hoffman, is a writer.

Hoffman joined Apple Computer in 1994, where he worked on eWorld, an early attempt at building an online service. AOL acquired eWorld in 1996. He later worked at Fujitsu before co-founding his first company, SocialNet.com, in 1997. It focused "on online dating and matching up people with similar interests, like golfers who were looking for partners in their neighborhood."

Hoffman was a member of PayPal's board of directors at the time it was founded. In January 2000, he left SocialNet and joined PayPal full-time as the company's COO. In June 2000, Hoffman became PayPal's Senior VP of Business Development, after a re-organization of PayPal's executive structure by then-CEO Elon Musk.

Hoffman co-founded LinkedIn in December 2002 with two former colleagues from SocialNet (including Allen Blue) and one former colleague from his time at Fujitsu. LinkedIn launched on May 5, 2003, as one of the first business-oriented online social networks. Peter Thiel, a colleague of Hoffman's at PayPal, invested in LinkedIn. At the time of LinkedIn's IPO on May 19, 2011, Hoffman owned a stake worth an estimated $2.34 billion, not including any potential benefits from Greylock Partners, where he was named a partner in 2009.

Microsoft proposed to acquire LinkedIn on June 13, 2016, for $26.2 billion in cash. Hoffman became a Microsoft board member on March 14, 2017.

In 2016, Reid Hoffman was among the first donors to OpenAI, a non-profit artificial intelligence research organization established by Sam Altman, Elon Musk, and others. In February 2018, Elon Musk departed from OpenAI's board, citing potential conflicts with his role at Tesla, due to Tesla's AI development for self-driving cars.

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

The book was released in the United States on February 14, 2012. It argues that individuals should think of themselves as businesses-of-one – the "CEO of their own career" – and draws many parallels between lessons learned from the stories of successful Silicon Valley technology companies and an individual's career.

Publishers Weekly reviewed the book positively, saying, "with plenty of valuable guidance relevant to any career stage, this book will help readers not only survive professionally in times of uncertainty but stand out from the pack and flourish." The Economist said that "Hoffman and Casnocha make a number of astute observations about shifts in the world of work."

The book became both a New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller.

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

In March 2025, Hoffman was appointed a Distinguished Academic Visitor at Queens' College, Cambridge.

In February 2025, Hoffman was appointed a Visiting Senior Fellow at the London School of Economics.

In 2024, Hoffman was appointed a Distinguished Fellow at the Columbia University Institute of Global Politics

In September 2023, Hoffman received Sigillum Magnum from University of Bologna during the Bologna Business School's commencement.

In 2022, Hoffman delivered the commencement address at Vanderbilt University and received Vanderbilt's Nichols-Chancellor's Medal.

In 2004, Hoffman married Michelle Yee. The couple resides in Seattle, Washington. Hoffman is an avid player of board games, including Settlers of Catan, and has said that such games are good training for business.

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

Hoffman served from 2006 until 2025 on the board of Kiva.org (peer-to-peer microlending pioneer that allows people to lend money via the internet to low-income/underserved entrepreneurs and students). He currently serves on the boards of Endeavor Global (an organization that finds and supports high-impact entrepreneurs in emerging markets), and New America (a think tank that focuses on a range of public policy issues, including national security, technology, health, gender, education, and the economy). He's the founding donor and board member at Opportunity@Work, an organization that seeks to eliminate the opportunity gap and provide millions of highly skilled but under-credentialed Americans (often from marginalized, rural and racially diverse backgrounds) better pathways to higher-paying jobs and careers. Hoffman is on the board of Lever for Change, an affiliate of the MacArthur Foundation, which connects donors with problem solvers to find and fund bold, effective solutions to accelerate social change. He's also on the board of the Berggruen Institute, a think tank.

Hoffman formerly served on the advisory council of the MIT Media Lab and as chair of the advisory board for QuestBridge (a provider of talented low-income students to top colleges/universities). Hoffman was also the first major funder of Crisis Text Line, a free, 24/7 crisis service via SMS in the US. In 2013, Hoffman provided a $250,000 matching grant (equivalent to $331,000 in 2024) to Code for America. In July 2016, Hoffman funded the $250,000 cash-prize (equivalent to $319,300 in 2024) MIT Media Lab MIT Disobedience Award, an award created by Hoffman and Joi Ito to honor and recognize acts of disobedience resulting in positive social impact. In November 2016, Hoffman and his wife, Michelle Yee, donated $20 million (equivalent to $25,550,000 in 2024) to the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, a charity dedicated to eradicating disease by 2100. Hoffman and Yee's donation was for the Biohub, the Initiative's San Francisco laboratory. Hoffman also joined the board of the Biohub project. In May 2018, Hoffman and Yee joined The Giving Pledge, "a global effort to help address society's most pressing problems by encouraging the wealthiest individuals and families to give the majority of their wealth to philanthropic causes."

Hoffman is also a long-time supporter of Second Harvest of Silicon Valley. In 2021, in response to the massive increased need due to the pandemic, he offered to match any donations to the food bank, up to $2 million (equivalent to $2,278,000 in 2024).

Hoffman is one of the backers of the Ethics and Governance of Artificial Intelligence Fund, a joint venture between the MIT Media Lab and the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University. He is on the board of the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence (HAI), whose mission is to "advance AI research, education, policy and practice to improve the human condition", and launched the institute's Hoffman-Yee Research Grants to "fund interdisciplinary teams with research spanning HAI's key areas of focus: understanding the human and societal impact of AI, augmenting human capabilities, and developing AI technologies inspired by human intelligence". In 2018, Hoffman made a gift to the University of Toronto's Faculty of Information, to endow a chair "to study how the new era of artificial intelligence (AI) will affect our lives."

Since at least 2011, Hoffman has been a member and regular attendee of the Bilderberg Group, which gathers 120–150 North American and European "political leaders and experts from industry, finance, academia and the media" for an annual invitation-only closed-door conference. Hoffman is also listed as a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, to which he was elected in 2015.

In April 2013, a pro-immigration lobbying group called FWD.us was launched, with Reid Hoffman listed as one of the founders. In 2014, Hoffman donated $150,000 (equivalent to $195,200 in 2024) to the Mayday PAC. Also in 2014, Hoffman contributed $500,000 (equivalent to $650,700 in 2024) toward David Chiu's State Assembly campaign by funding an independent expenditure committee devoted to negative campaigning against his opponent: San Franciscans to Hold Campos Accountable—Vote No for Campos for State Assembly 2014. In 2016, Hoffman contributed $220,000 (equivalent to $281,000 in 2024) in support of Democratic candidate for Vermont governor Matt Dunne, according to a mass-media disclosure filed at the Vermont Secretary of State's Office.

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

In December 2018, the New York Times broke a story alleging that Hoffman had "put $100,000 into an experiment that adopted Russia-inspired political disinformation tactics on Facebook" during the 2017 special Senate race in Alabama, in a project known as Project Birmingham which allegedly targeted Roy Moore voters. Hoffman did not immediately respond. He apologized later that month, also stating he was unaware what the non-profit—Washington, D.C.–based American Engagement Technologies, or AET—had been doing. Hoffman helped fund E. Jean Carroll's lawsuit for defamation and battery against Donald Trump. On May 9, 2023, a jury found Trump liable and awarded Carroll $5 million in damages.

In 2018, Hoffman helped fund Alloy, a company founded to legally exchange data with affiliated Democratic groups like super PACs. Hoffman supplied half of the $35 million to start it. The company shut down in 2021.