{"id":1012,"date":"2026-02-19T12:57:22","date_gmt":"2026-02-19T12:57:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.sterlingcooper.info\/blog\/?p=1012"},"modified":"2026-02-19T12:57:22","modified_gmt":"2026-02-19T12:57:22","slug":"gay-men-run-silicon-valley-the-open-secret-exposed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sterlingcooper.info\/blog\/gay-men-run-silicon-valley-the-open-secret-exposed\/","title":{"rendered":"GAY MEN RUN SILICON VALLEY-THE OPEN SECRET EXPOSED"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Inside the Gay Tech Mafia<\/h1>\n<\/div>\n
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Gay men have long been rumored to run Silicon Valley. WIRED investigates.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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ILLUSTRATION: SAM WHITNEY; GETTY IMAGES<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/header>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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No one can say exactly when, or if, gay men started running Silicon Valley. They seem to have dominated its upper ranks at least the past five years, maybe more.<\/div>\n
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On platforms like X, the clues are there: whispers of private-island retreats, tech executives going \u201cgay for clout,\u201d and the suggestion that a \u201cseed round\u201d is not, strictly speaking, a financial term. It is an idea so taken for granted, in fact, that when I call up a well-connected hedge fund manager to ask his thoughts about what is sometimes referred to in industry circles as the \u201cgay tech mafia,\u201d he audibly yawns. \u201cOf course,\u201d he says. \u201cThis has always been the case.\u201d<\/div>\n
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It had been the case, the hedge funder says, back in 2012, when he was raising money from a venture capitalist whose office was staffed with dozens of \u201cattractive, strong young men,\u201d all of whom were \u201cunder 30\u201d and looked as though they had freshly decamped from \u201cthe high school debate club.\u201d \u201cThey were all sleeping with each other and starting companies,\u201d he says. And it is absolutely the case now, he adds, when gay men are running influential companies in Silicon Valley<\/a> and maintain entire social calendars with scarcely a straight man, much less a woman, in sight. \u201cOf course the gay tech mafia exists,\u201d he continues. \u201cThis is not some Illuminati conspiracy theory. And you do not have to be gay to join. They like straight guys who sleep with them even more.\u201d<\/div>\n
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Ever since I started covering Silicon Valley in 2017, I\u2019ve heard variations of this rumor\u2014that \u201cgays,\u201d as an AI founder named Emmett Chen-Ran has quipped, \u201crun this joint.\u201d On its face, a gay tech mafia seemed too dumb to warrant actual investigative inquiry. Sure, there were gay men in high places: Peter Thiel, Tim Cook, Sam Altman, Keith Rabois, the list went on. But the idea that they were operating some kind of shadowy cabal seemed born entirely of homophobia, the indulgence of which might play into the hands of conspiracy-minded conservatives like Laura Loomer<\/a>, who, in 2024, tweeted that the \u201chigh tech VC world just seems to be one big, exploitative gay mafia.\u201d<\/div>\n
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Over time, though, the rumor refused to die, eventually curdling into something closer to conventional wisdom. Last spring, at a venture capitalist\u2019s party in Southern California, a middle-aged investor complained to me at length about how he was struggling to raise his new fund. The problem, he explained, boiled down to discrimination.<\/div>\n
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I took him in as he spoke. He had the uniform down cold: a white man with a crew cut, wearing a tasteless button-down stretched over mild prosperity, and a fluent conviction that AI was, thank god, the next big thing. He looked exactly like the sort of man Silicon Valley has been built to reward. And yet here he was, insisting that the system was rigged against him. \u201cIf I were gay, I wouldn\u2019t be having any trouble,\u201d he said. \u201cThat\u2019s the whole thing with Silicon Valley these days. The only way to catch a break,\u201d he claimed, \u201cis if you\u2019re gay.\u201d<\/div>\n
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Over the course of 2025, similar sentiments bubbled up on X, where Silicon Valley tech workers joked about offering \u201cfractional vizier services to the gay elite.\u201d Anonymous accounts hinted at an underworld of gay Silicon Valley power brokers who influenced and courted\u2014\u201cgroomed\u201d\u2014aspiring entrepreneurs. At an AI conference in Los Angeles, an engineer casually referred to a top AI firm\u2019s offices, more than once, as \u201ctwink town.\u201d<\/div>\n
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By the fall, speculation intensified, and then a photo appeared on X of a group of Y Combinator\u2013backed founders crowded near a sauna with Garry Tan, the incubator\u2019s president. The image seemed innocuous enough: a few young, nerdy men in swim trunks, squinting into the camera.<\/div>\n
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But almost instantly, it set off a round of viral gossip about the peculiar intimacies of venture capital culture. Not long after, a founder from Germany, Joschua Sutee, posted a photo of himself and his male cofounders\u2014apparently naked, swaddled in bedsheets\u2014submitted as part of what seemed to be a Y Combinator application, a move that appeared designed to court a knowingly erotic male audience. \u201cHere I come, @ycombinator,\u201d the caption read.<\/div>\n
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The notion that Y Combinator<\/a> was grooming male entrepreneurs makes little sense\u2014for lots of reasons, and for one in particular. \u201cGarry is straight straight straight straight,<\/em>\u201d says a person who knows Tan. \u201cBut he believes in the benefits of the sauna.\u201d When I ask Tan for a comment, he is blunt\u2014some founders were over for dinner and asked to use his recently installed sauna and cold plunge. From there, Tan says, \u201crejects\u201d of Y Combinator \u201cmanufactured this meme that it was somehow more than that.\u201d<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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And yet, similar rumors persisted and compounded, originating as often from outsiders (sometimes with dubious political motivations) as from insiders. When I call up my longtime industry sources to get their thoughts on the gay tech mafia, not only have they heard of it\u2014they have highly specific notions of how it works.<\/div>\n
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These are credible people who believe seemingly incredible things. One San Francisco investor tells me that he believes the Thiel Fellowship is a training ground for gay industry leaders.<\/div>\n
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(When I run this notion past a couple of former Thiel Fellows, they tell me they met Thiel<\/a> one time at a dinner, where he appeared \u201cslightly bored,\u201d says one of the fellows, a straight man. \u201cI mean, I wish<\/em> Peter tried to groom me.\u201d) Meanwhile, people\u2019s gaydars are practically overheating. I hear, more than once, that anyone in Silicon Valley who has achieved outsize success is probably gay.<\/div>\n
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Isn\u2019t it strange, one San Francisco\u2013based venture capitalist muses, how a certain defense-tech executive achieved so much success at a relatively young age? \u201cIsn\u2019t he gay?\u201d the VC asks. \u201cHe must be.\u201d I tell him he is mistaken\u2014the executive is married to a woman. \u201cSure,\u201d he replies. \u201cBut have you ever seen them together?\u201d Another entrepreneur who raised capital from two well-known gay investors tells me that he\u2019s accustomed to fielding scrutiny about his sexual orientation. \u201cPeople say I\u2019m gay,\u201d he says. \u201cThere\u2019s always jokes. Like, \u2018How\u2019d you get the money, bro?\u2019\u201d<\/div>\n
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Then there are the anonymous X accounts amplifying allegations of misconduct. Their posts are calibrated for attention: detailed enough to suggest insider knowledge of the Valley, vague enough to invite darker interpretations. I take the bait and, one afternoon in late November, spend nearly an hour texting one such account owner over Signal who agrees to speak to me only if I keep his handle secret.<\/div>\n
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This person describes the Valley as a place known for \u201cecstasy, psychedelic fueled gay sex stuff.\u201d Has he experienced any of it himself? No. But he knows people who have\u2014people who are \u201cpretty afraid\u201d and \u201cyoung af.\u201d He won\u2019t name names, won\u2019t connect me to anyone, but he swears that any negative rumor I\u2019ve heard about gay men in Silicon Valley is true. He suggests a conspiracy so sprawling it rivals QAnon and implicates the entire US government. He gives me vague reporting advice: \u201cIt should be easy to find. 2nd page of Google type thing.\u201d<\/div>\n
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Finally, frustrated by his evasiveness, I ask what he thinks will happen if he tells me what he knows. \u201cI truly believe,\u201d he says, \u201ckilled.\u201d Then he offers a suggestion. The only way to expose this blockbuster of a tale is \u201cproject veritas style: Take a 20 year old dude, make an X acc[ount]. Send him to the right places in SF and you\u2019ll break the story if you go deep enough.\u201d<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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ILLUSTRATION: SAM WHITNEY; GETTY IMAGES<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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The problem with conspiracy theories, even offensive ones, is that they are rarely wholly invented. They almost always arise from some fragment of truth, which imagination then contorts.<\/div>\n
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The difficulty with this particular rumor is that, while I was unable to substantiate darker allegations, parts of the story still resonate. In conversations with 51 people\u201431 of them gay men, many of them influential investors and entrepreneurs\u2014a portrait emerged of gay influence in Silicon Valley that is intricate, layered, and often contradictory. It is a world in which power, desire, and ambition interweave in ways both visible and unseen, a world that is, in some ways, far richer\u2014and more complicated\u2014than the rumors themselves suggest.<\/div>\n
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Most of the people who speak to me for this story do so on the condition that their names be kept confidential. Some of it is just garden-variety caution. \u201cIt may not be wise for me to be talking to a reporter describing all these parties,\u201d says one, \u201cbecause people would be like, Geez, why would we invite you?<\/em>\u201d Other excuses are murkier: \u201cIt\u2019s not so safe to speak about this in too much detail,\u201d says a founder who works in AI. \u201cAnyone involved is an operator or a VC, and it might lead people to wonder about who is getting advantages.\u201d Amid the deflections and whispers, though, there seems to be an unmistakable truth: Gay men are rising.<\/div>\n
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\u201cThe gays who work in tech are succeeding vastly,\u201d an angel investor, who is a gay man, tells me. \u201cThere\u2019s the founder group of gays who all hang out with each other, because the gays always<\/em> cluster together. By virtue of that, they become friends and vacation together.\u201d Even more importantly: \u201cThey support each other, whether that\u2019s to hire someone or angel invest in their companies or lead their funding rounds.\u201d<\/div>\n
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Some of these networks have begun to spill into public view. There is a Substack called Friend Of<\/em>,<\/a> written by Jack Randall, who formerly worked in communications at Robinhood, that chronicles gay ascendence into the centers of power. \u201cWe run the tech mafia (see Apple, OpenAI),\u201d Randall writes. \u201cWe hold top government posts (see the Treasury Secretary). We anchor primetime news and the NYE Ball Drop. Our dating app\u2019s stock outperforms its straight peers. And in the US, gay men are, on average, better educated and wealthier than the general population.\u201d<\/div>\n
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A new company called Sector<\/a> aims to formalize this network. Founded by Brian Tran, a former designer in residence at Kleiner Perkins, Sector has a website that features photos of handsome men on beaches and at dimly lit dinners. One member describes it to me as a curated network where introductions unfold between well-heeled gay men with shared interests. \u201cIt\u2019s up to you to decide,\u201d the member tells me. \u201cIs this professional, is it platonic, or is it something romantic?\u201d In an interview with Randall, Tran said, \u201cI think we could displace Grindr in the coming years.\u201d<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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On any given week in San Francisco, Partiful invites float around the community. If there is a \u201cregular Halloween party, the gays will have their own Halloween party, and Sam Altman will be there,\u201d says Jayden Clark, a straight podcaster who hosts a tech culture podcast and was not invited to the gay Halloween party. (Altman attended dressed as Spider-Man, a nod to Andrew Garfield, who played the superhero and has since been cast as Altman in an upcoming film.) I hear of not one but two White Lotus<\/em>\u2013themed gay tech parties, both equally extravagant. \u201cGirls are not present,\u201d says that same angel investor. \u201cThey are just not there.\u201d<\/div>\n
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There is also a \u201cGay VC Mafia\u201d group chat that is, as one member describes it, \u201c60 percent business\u201d and \u201c40 percent hee hee ha ha\u201d about \u201cclassically gay topics.\u201d With a steady churn of tech events aimed at gay men, the social incentives stack up fast. Connections blur\u2014\u201cprofessional, physical, or sometimes romantic,\u201d as an AI founder puts it. The pull of this bubble is so strong, he continues, that it\u2019s \u201can uphill battle to socialize with straight people.\u201d<\/div>\n
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None of this is necessarily unfamiliar in the clubby world of Silicon Valley, where the smart, successful, and wildly rich have always formed in-groups. There\u2019s the so-called OpenAI mafia and the Airbnb mafia, and before those the PayPal mafia\u2014alumni of moonshot companies who bankroll the next wave of startups. So some of what reads as advantage is, on closer inspection, structural and unremarkable. San Francisco combines two things in unusual density: one of the country\u2019s largest gay populations and a tech industry that has reshaped global power.<\/div>\n
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\u201cFor sure, gay men are overrepresented and have had an unbelievable run in the Bay Area,\u201d says Mark, another gay entrepreneur who runs an AI startup. \u201cIn a city that has the most venture capital in the world, it isn\u2019t surprising that this money is going directly to gay men.\u201d (This perception, for what it\u2019s worth, runs counter to statistics: Between 2000 and 2022, the years for which data is available, only 0.5 percent of startup venture funding went to LGBTQ+ founders<\/a>.) \u201cIt\u2019s not that there is some kind of gay mafia,\u201d Mark continues.<\/div>\n
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\u201cBut if I told you who are my friends that I want to invest in, they happen to be gays. Who are the people without kids who can grind away on the weekends? It\u2019s the gays.\u201d (Sources identified in this story by a first name only, like Mark, preferred the use of pseudonyms.)<\/div>\n
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Imagine this, Mark says: You are a young, nerdy, closeted gay man. You grow up never quite fitting in. Your parents start asking questions. Why don\u2019t you have a girlfriend? You tell them you\u2019re too busy for a relationship. Eventually, you move to San Francisco, a city that, as one person puts it, is like \u201cDisneyland for gay men.<\/div>\n
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\u201d Your world opens up. You meet other people like you\u2014men who are openly out, many for the first time in their lives. These men happen to be working at influential companies. They are building technology that is astonishing. And slowly it dawns on you: Maybe you, too\u2014a person who has spent a lifetime overlooked and underestimated\u2014can build something extraordinary. \u201cGays feel,\u201d Mark says, \u201cthat they have something to prove.\u201d<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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This is, more or less, the nature of how power and money have moved throughout networks since the dawn of time. And gay networks seem naturally aligned to the dynamics of venture funding, where established wealth meets emerging talent. \u201cOne of the key things to realize is that gays are different than straights in many different ways,\u201d says a longtime gay venture capitalist.<\/div>\n
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\u201cGays are cross-generational.\u201d While straight people tend to spend more time with people their own age, \u201cthat is not true with gay men. I can hang out with someone at an event who is 18 years old, and Peter [Thiel] might also be there.\u201d<\/div>\n
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Just because you are gay and work in tech does not necessarily mean you are part of the so-called gay tech mafia. Much of the queer spectrum is conspicuously absent from events geared toward gay founders. \u201cThere are barriers within the community,\u201d says Danny Gray, a leader at Out Professionals, a networking organization for LGBTQ+ businesspeople.<\/div>\n
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\u201cCis gay men are the biggest gay group within the acronym, and it is much harder for other letters.\u201d Lesbians tend to be sidelined; when I ask the hyperconnected tech journalist Kara Swisher about the gay tech mafia, she says she wasn\u2019t aware there was one. And even if you are a gay man, inclusion is not necessarily guaranteed. \u201cI\u2019ve found it hard to break into this group myself,\u201d one gay investor tells me. \u201cI probably need to lose 20 pounds.\u201d<\/div>\n
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It may be that what outsiders perceive as the gay tech mafia is not gay people working in tech, or even, broadly speaking, gay men, but a small, self-selecting group with shared politics and sensibilities.<\/div>\n
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They are assumed to prize aesthetics and the masculine physique, scorn identity politics, reject DEI in favor of MEI\u2014\u201cmerit, excellence, and intelligence\u201d\u2014and lean right-wing, if not MAGA. I\u2019ve heard straight entrepreneurs describe them as \u201cthe Greco-Roman gays,\u201d part of \u201can insular, hypermasculine culture\u201d in which \u201cwomen are seen as totally redundant and completely unnecessary.\u201d (A woman who once worked for a gay Republican startup founder describes it like this: \u201cYou get about the same amount of misogyny, but not the sexual harassment. So that\u2019s nice.\u201d)<\/div>\n
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Where, then, might these almighty power gays be observed in their natural habitat? This is one of the guiding questions in my research, the answer to which perpetually evades me. When I ask a gay investor if perhaps I can attend one of these parties as a fly-on-the-wall observer, he tells me no, because it would be weird, given that I am\u2014unfortunately for the purposes of this story\u2014a woman.<\/div>\n
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\u201cPeople will be like, \u2018Is that your sister?\u2019\u201d he says. I float an idea past my editor that I attend a party disguised as a man. Perhaps, I suggest, we should discuss the budget for my makeover? While not entirely disinterested in the idea, my editor offers another suggestion, that he\u2014a gay man\u2014come along as a kind of chaperone, \u201cfor safety\u201d purposes. Neither of us revisits the idea.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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There is one place, though, that is mentioned again and again: Barry\u2019s, the fitness bootcamp, which has become a gay mecca, thanks in part to the high-profile investor Keith Rabois, who has long been one of its most avid devotees, to the point of teaching occasional classes. And one Barry\u2019s in particular keeps coming up: \u201cThe Barry\u2019s in the Castro is ranked supreme,\u201d says that same gay angel investor. \u201cIt is all guys, all gays, and everyone<\/em> has abs.\u201d (\u201cFrom what I\u2019ve learned working here, gay men do<\/em> love to work out,\u201d confirms a female employee at the Castro Barry\u2019s.)<\/div>\n
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The fact is, most people seem eager to talk about this, no deceptions on my part necessary. Many of them reply almost immediately to my vague inquiries. Even more surprising is their willingness to talk at length. Calls often run for hours, blending measured observations about life in a masculine-dominated culture with tours through the most salacious industry intrigue of my entire career.<\/div>\n
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There can be an edge to the gossip, though\u2014an implication that one of the most reliable paths to power in Silicon Valley may run through the bedroom. Some men are eager to hop on a call to ask what I may or may not have already heard about them. One gay founder tells me how a rumor has been circulating (a version of which I have, in fact, heard) that he and his husband slept with a gay investor in exchange for a down payment on their home. \u201cDo people really think,\u201d he wonders, \u201cthat we can\u2019t afford a condo?\u201d<\/div>\n
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Many have, at some point or another, been suspected of romantic involvement, even if they\u2019ve never been in the same room together. When I call up Ben Ling, an investor and early Google employee, to ask about long-standing speculation that he might be a good match for Tim Cook\u2014a pairing intriguing enough to be referenced in The Atlantic\u2014he laughs. \u201cPeople make up these rumors because they have nothing better to do,\u201d he says. \u201cTim Cook does not know who I am.\u201d<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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And while it is true that at least some of these men know and see each other socially, these meetups do not reliably lead to romance. A friend of Rabois tells me that Rabois likes to tell a story of the time, years earlier, when he invited Sam Altman as his plus-one to an event. \u201cHe said that Sam brought two phones and was texting on both of them the entire time,\u201d the friend says. \u201cKeith says it was the worst date he ever went on.\u201d (Use of the word \u201cdate\u201d has, by relevant parties, been disputed.)<\/div>\n
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For rising figures who have formed genuine friendships with powerful gay industry leaders, success sometimes comes with a penalty: the assumption that it is borrowed, not earned. Brad, a gay industry leader, has long lived with rumors about his friendship with Peter Thiel\u2014rumors that followed him even as his career advanced.<\/div>\n
\u201cWhen I started working with Peter so long ago, people would be like, Oh, did you sleep with him? Blah blah blah.<\/em>\u201d The answer, he says, is no. And yet, \u201cfor some reason everyone felt perfectly comfortable asking me about it. Straight people were interested in it generally, but the people who were really fucking fascinated were other gay guys. Guys would be like: What does he have that I don\u2019t have?<\/em> So then they assume, Well, Peter must have thought you were cute<\/em>.\u201d (Thiel did not respond to requests for comment.)<\/div>\n
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Still, it\u2019s naive to insist that intimacy with power is without its advantages. When Altman\u2019s former boyfriend, early Stripe employee Lachy Groom, raised a $250 million solo venture fund while still in his twenties, some observers read the achievement less as an anomaly of talent, I\u2019m told, than as an artifact of access. This interpretation, according to a gay investor close to both Groom and Altman, is not entirely fair:<\/div>\n
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\u201cWhen Lachy and Sam were dating, Sam was kind of famous, but not nearly as famous as he is now, and Lachy was a person in his own right,\u201d the investor says. \u201cI did give a reference to [an investor in Groom\u2019s fund] saying, \u2018Yes, he\u2019s unproven as an investor, yes, he\u2019s young.<\/div>\n
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But he is in the network, and he is Sam\u2019s ex-boyfriend.\u2019 But Lachy didn\u2019t date Sam to get these things.\u201d (Groom declined to comment on the record, as did a representative for Altman.)<\/div>\n
Meanwhile, when straight men attempt to tap into the gay network, the gay investors chat amongst themselves. Mark, who hosts dinner parties and events for the gay tech community in San Francisco, says that he noticed one man constantly RSVPing to his events. \u201cWe don\u2019t have a purity test,\u201d he says, \u201cbut someone said that guy is definitely<\/em> not gay, he just goes to the gay man events because he wants deal flow.\u201d It isn\u2019t like straight men are excluded per se, but they are not exactly a welcome addition to the world of gay capital.<\/div>\n
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The joke, if a straight founder does show up, is: Just don\u2019t tell anyone you\u2019re straight.<\/em><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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\u201cI have seen straight men do untoward things,\u201d says a gay investor. \u201cThere is a straight guy who is not important enough to be named who would pitch all the gay investors, and in one meeting at the VC partnership he was talking to a gay general partner who I know. And in the meeting, this guy put his hand on the GP\u2019s leg under the table. It is so inappropriate. It became a running joke, like, not this guy again<\/em>.\u201d<\/div>\n
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One person in particular has helped fuel the notion that being gay can benefit one\u2019s career: Delian Asparouhov, the mischievous, 31-year-old cofounder of Varda Space Industries, who was once hired as Rabois\u2019 chief of staff. Rabois, who helped Thiel start PayPal and was later a partner at Thiel\u2019s venture firm, Founders Fund, was a subject of corporate scrutiny years earlier.<\/div>\n
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While at Square, Rabois was accused of sexual harassment by a male colleague, an episode that ultimately ended with Rabois\u2019 departure from the company. (After an internal investigation, the company backed Rabois.)<\/div>\n
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In 2018, about 100 people attended Rabois\u2019 wedding to Jacob Helberg, a former adviser at Palantir who currently serves as the US undersecretary of state for economic growth. The wedding was a multiday affair with a guest list that included many of the most important people in tech and culminated in a beachside wedding ceremony officiated by Sam Altman. (Rabois\u2019 bad \u201cdate\u201d with Altman resulted, apparently, in close friendship.)<\/div>\n
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During the wedding, Asparouhov gave a toast, which was later recalled by Fred, a longtime gay tech leader who was in attendance. \u201cDelian said something like, \u2018I\u2019m the intern that Keith hired, and I would wear short shorts and tank tops at Square.\u2019\u201d Fred says he was sitting at a table with two famous tech executives. \u201cWe just raised our eyebrows,\u201d Fred continues. \u201cIt was so<\/em> embarrassing that Delian would say that at someone\u2019s wedding. I mean, here was Keith getting married<\/em> to Jacob.\u201d (Other wedding attendees claim not to remember the contents of the speech but say it sounds like Asparouhov.)<\/div>\n
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Rumors of Asparouhov and Rabois\u2019 dating lives have long traveled in industry circles, thanks in part to Asparouhov, who has fanned the flames online. (\u201cDelian is like Gretchen Wieners,\u201d explains Fred.) In 2022, a popular anonymous tech insider X account, Roon, tweeted that it was \u201ccrazy how venture capitalists have reinvented the Roman system of pederasty.\u201d Asparouhov responded to the tweet almost immediately: \u201cIt only took a little gay and now I get to work on space factories,\u201d he wrote. \u201cPretty reasonable trade.\u201d Asparouhov, who is married to a woman, now says the tweet was \u201cobviously a joke.\u201d<\/div>\n
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But as Fred recounted, Asparouhov was<\/em> known for wearing neon tank tops, short shorts, and mismatched shoes when he joined Square in 2012. \u201cHe would jump a lot\u2014it was very odd,\u201d says someone who worked at the company at that time. Others have similar recollections. OpenStore, the Miami-based company Rabois cofounded in 2021, which mostly shut down last year, seemed to be, according to John, who says he visited its offices, \u201calmost like a harem, filled with jacked white men, all of them handsome and good-looking, straight and gay.<\/div>\n
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People were wearing kind of inappropriate clothing: really<\/em> short shorts and tight shirts even though the AC was blasting.\u201d Rabois, when I ask him for a comment, denies this categorically. \u201cAttire was quite standard for Florida,\u201d he says. \u201cAnd I doubt more than two of the 100-plus employees could be reasonably described as \u2018jacked.\u2019\u201d<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Rabois has been known to take extravagant vacations\u2014helicopter trips to Icelandic volcanoes, white-water rafting in Costa Rica. Exclusion can stir serious envy, as it did with one young gay tech consultant I speak with who says he has begun a kind of \u201cmicro-journalism\u201d project to track the appearances of a couple of guys on Rabois\u2019 Instagram. These are \u201clow-level\u201d workers, he says, who nonetheless are \u201calways posting photos in St. Barts.\u201d \u201cHere I am doomscrolling on the A train, and I\u2019m like, \u2018How are these guys<\/em> on a private jet?\u2019\u201d<\/div>\n
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But how far back do these rumors really go? Has Silicon Valley always been semi-secretly, kinda-sorta gay? More than once, I\u2019m told to connect with Joel, a gay man who works in tech and who spent a lot of time among the older in-group of powerful gay men in Silicon Valley, more than a decade ago. \u201cSo,\u201d I say when he answers my call, \u201care you a member of the gay tech mafia?\u201d He laughs. \u201cMaybe someone thinks I\u2019m in it, which is why you\u2019re calling me.\u201d<\/div>\n
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When I ask Joel to explain how the gay tech mafia works, he tells me that it\u2019s similar to people who \u201cwent to the same college or came from a similar background or a similar town.\u201d And it indeed started, he says, with people like Rabois and Thiel, who, after they rose to power, \u201cbrought a lot of people along. Keith hired gays at Square, and Peter hired Mike [Solana] at Founders Fund. Then there was a cohort of Google gays that Marissa Mayer ran in 2010. And there is Sam, who is friends with Keith, and Sam was running in parallel, assembling other gays around him.\u201d<\/div>\n
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Joel tells me about the parties at the time\u2014the exact specifics of which remain off the record. But they were, in summary, what you might expect. \u201cThere was lots of drinking that would turn into weird situations. Random people hooking up. Generally, there was a sexual tone.\u201d But this was years ago. These types of parties, at least from what I\u2019ve heard, have either disappeared or moved entirely underground. (\u201cOnce you get to the end of your reporting, you will find that the real story is much less explosive,\u201d says Mark. \u201cLike all these wild orgies: If you do find out where they are, please<\/em> tell me, because I\u2019d like to go.\u201d)<\/div>\n
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I tell Joel that I\u2019ve heard from some young men in the tech industry who feel pressured to sleep around to get ahead. Was that true in his experience? \u201cMmmmm,\u201d he says, and pauses. Then he bursts out laughing. \u201cI mean, in all of this, there are weird gray areas. It can<\/em> be very sexual. It is not all professional. A lot of people have dated or slept with each other.\u201d He had experienced a kind of coercion firsthand. \u201cI definitely felt pressured to do\u2014not overtly illegal things. But they walked the line.\u201d Joel is older now, and while he can see how someone might describe this as an abuse of power, he resists the framing.<\/div>\n
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The exchange of sex and status may not be the reason these men rose so quickly, but it can be a factor\u2014if only because sex, as he puts it, \u201cmakes people become closer rapidly.\u201d<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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As Silicon Valley has matured into the power center of the world, it has grown sharply cutthroat. Leverage is scarce, and ambition is often laced with a kind of ruthless opportunism. In gay circles, some feel the Valley resembles the old Hollywood casting couch. Many of the critics are rising gay entrepreneurs and investors themselves, for whom parts of the gay community seem steeped in the attitudes and values of the 1970s and \u201980s. \u201cThere\u2019s this feeling,\u201d one observes, \u201cthat because there were years of historical oppressions only recently recognized, certain people think, \u2018I can do this, or I deserve this, because no one will cancel me for it.\u2019\u201d<\/div>\n
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ILLUSTRATION: SAM WHITNEY; GETTY IMAGES<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n
This is a community that, as one young gay investor describes it, is \u201cpower-hungry, network-driven, and, at times, very horny.\u201d The arrangement, he suggests, is tacitly understood by everyone involved: \u201cBoth sides know they are in the game and want something from each other. Which is fine, I guess, if you\u2019re into that.\u201d This is not, in his telling, the whole of the gay tech scene, most of which is a \u201clovely, amazing community that supports its people and their career progress<\/div>\n
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.\u201d But alongside that exists a sexual undercurrent\u2014one that, he insists, is impossible to deny and especially pronounced in AI circles. \u201cIt\u2019s like a gay nepo thing,\u201d he says. \u201cWhile it\u2019s not explicitly for sexual favors, there is an element at work in the background. Like, you\u2019re young and you\u2019re hot and I\u2019m down to hook up.\u201d<\/div>\n
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One gay man, Dean, describes moving through a professional world in which sexual suggestion flowed freely. Early on, it came from limited partners curious about his prospective fund; after he raised the fund, it came from founders seeking capital. In one instance, a potential limited partner proposed a meeting at his home. \u201cHe was like, \u2018We don\u2019t need to wear clothes, we can just sit around and talk about your fund in my hot tub.\u2019\u201d Dean frames these encounters as an irritation\u2014ambient, expected, and largely inconsequential. \u201cSex is devalued in gay male culture,\u201d he says. \u201cOften, it\u2019s just another piece of currency.\u201d<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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After Dean raised his fund, he was occasionally approached by young men, \u201cfounders looking for money who indicated they were open to whatever it takes to raise it.\u201d At events geared toward LGBT founders, young men would ask to grab drinks one on one. Sometimes, they\u2019d send nudes on Instagram. \u201cLike \u2018Hey \u2026\u2019 with a winky face. And \u2018Do you like that?\u2019 And I\u2019d be like, \u2018No, that\u2019s actually inappropriate,\u2019\u201d he says. It\u2019s not confined to Silicon Valley, he adds. Having left tech for a different industry, Dean has come to see the entanglement of sex, power, and ambition as a recurring feature of certain pockets of gay professional life.<\/div>\n
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Another man who works in the queer tech space puts it this way: \u201cThere is an aspect of being queer and in business and in life and having relationships that can be frankly sexual and not sexual at the same time. You can turn off and do business with someone you were hooking up with yesterday.\u201d Plus, he continues, there is the inescapable fact that much of gay male culture tends to be sexually charged. \u201cStraight guys have the golf course. Gay guys have the orgy,\u201d he says. \u201cIt doesn\u2019t mean it\u2019s problematic. It\u2019s consensual, but it is a way we bond and connect.\u201d<\/div>\n
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Of the 31 gay men I spoke to for this story, nine tell me they experienced unwanted advances from other gay men in the industry. Some of these advances were mild but annoying: repeated invitations to soak in hot tubs or explore wine cellars. Others involved unwanted touches. One person, an up-and-coming gay investor, tells me that he believes that turning down a sexual advance from a senior colleague cost him a job. Multiple sources speak of \u201csex pests\u201d who send unsolicited dick pics and make overt come-ons.<\/div>\n
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\u201cWhat demoralizes me in the conversations around the gays in tech in San Francisco is that none of this is entirely a secret,\u201d says one gay investor who experienced an unwanted sexual advance. \u201cPeople are aware this is an issue.\u201d Another gay man who works in tech adds: \u201cThere is an element to this story that is a cautionary tale. You take a brilliant entrepreneur who has a great idea trying to make it in the world of venture capital. And then they have to put up with someone sending them dick pics and asking for an investment meeting. It shouldn\u2019t be normalized. And right now, everything is so gray. Like, it\u2019s our little thing, our little world. But it has a massive impact.\u201d<\/div>\n
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Again and again, gay men working in tech ask me: Why has this story never been written? The question somewhat answers itself. Unfair stereotypes about gay men persist, and why else would sources insist on pseudonyms? I am warned, more than once, to be careful, that figures in Silicon Valley are \u201cvindictive.\u201d Even as many consider this culture of sexual pressure a feature<\/em> of Silicon Valley life, it is, as someone else tells me, \u201ca true minefield\u201d to write about.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Gerald knows the feeling. He\u2019s a young gay man in San Francisco, described by acquaintances as a \u201cquirky individual\u201d and a \u201csocial puppeteer.\u201d Over a call, Gerald lays out the reasons he has hesitated to talk about his time in tech. \u201cThis is a complex subject,\u201d he says, \u201cand I don\u2019t think readers can draw the distinction between some bad men being gay and all gay men being bad. It can be a slippery slope into homophobia.\u201d<\/div>\n
He won\u2019t give his story to me.<\/div>\n
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Not yet. But he does tell me he suspects that other stories, in the coming months, will surface. \u201cPeople have a difficult time articulating power with nuance,\u201d he says. \u201cThis is not just one story. There will be many.\u201d From what he\u2019s told me so far, and from everything else I\u2019ve heard\u2014the heartfelt, late-night confessions over the phone; the insights shared quietly and kept off the record; the admissions of dozens of funny, brilliant, young gay men competing for, yes, power and money and recognition, but also for love, romance, and a place to belong in the heart of San Francisco\u2014I believe him.<\/div>\n
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Inside the Gay Tech Mafia Gay men have long been rumored to run Silicon Valley. WIRED investigates. ILLUSTRATION: SAM WHITNEY; GETTY IMAGES No one can say exactly when, or if, gay men started running Silicon Valley. They seem to have dominated its upper ranks at least the past five years, maybe more. On platforms like […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1012","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sterlingcooper.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1012","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sterlingcooper.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sterlingcooper.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sterlingcooper.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sterlingcooper.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1012"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.sterlingcooper.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1012\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1013,"href":"https:\/\/www.sterlingcooper.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1012\/revisions\/1013"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sterlingcooper.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1012"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sterlingcooper.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1012"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sterlingcooper.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1012"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}