Ex-Biden Officials Dispute Andreessen's Story on AI Lunch

Former Biden administration officials publicly disputed Marc Andreessen's oft-repeated story about a May 2024 White House lunch, writing in Politico that the venture capitalist's account of a secret plan to effectively ban AI startups is not what happened at the meeting.

"Since the election of Donald Trump, venture capitalist Marc Andreessen has told one podcast after another of a May 2024 lunch in the Biden White House where he claims we and our colleagues shared a secret plan to effectively ban AI startups," the officials wrote. They say they held their tongue for two years and are speaking now to set the record straight, and that they don't know whether Andreessen simply misremembered the discussion or purposely misrepresented it.

Andreessen has retold the story across multiple podcasts. He describes his exchanges with Biden administration officials as alarming and cites the lunch as a reason he and his partner Ben Horowitz decided to back Donald Trump. The Politico piece frames itself as setting the record straight while AI policy fights heat up, arriving amid a stream of Washington oversight coverage we track on AI regulation.