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Reid Hoffman visited Jeffrey Epstein's private island, Little St. James, in 2014 and met with Epstein at MIT's campus in 2013 - after Epstein had become a registered sex offender. The relationship began through MIT Media Lab director Joi Ito for fundraising purposes. In September 2019, after the scandal erupted publicly, Hoffman apologized: 'By agreeing to participate in any fundraising activity where Epstein was present, I helped to repair his reputation and perpetuate injustice.' In November 2025, President Trump ordered an investigation into Democrats mentioned in newly released Epstein files, including Hoffman.

Airbnb listings diverted housing stock from long-term tenants to short-term rentals, reducing homes available for residents and driving up rent and property prices. In Toronto alone, the platform eliminated approximately 6,500 homes from the housing market according to a Fairbnb report. Critics alleged that in dozens of cities worldwide, the service 'hyper-accelerates affordable housing crises and gentrification patterns that force out residents.' CEO Brian Chesky acknowledged there is 'absolutely merit to the concerns.' Cities including New York, San Francisco, and Los Angeles enacted regulations limiting short-term rentals to protect housing availability.

Pierre Omidyar launched First Look Media in 2013 as a collaboration with journalists Glenn Greenwald, Jeremy Scahill, and Laura Poitras, promising $250 million in funding. The first publication was The Intercept, launched in February 2014. The initiative focused on adversarial journalism. In 2023, The Intercept restructured as an independent nonprofit.

Following the Snowden revelations in 2013, Berners-Lee publicly condemned mass surveillance programs by the NSA and GCHQ, calling them 'appalling and foolish.' He called for a 'full and frank debate' about government surveillance and the balance between security and privacy.

On October 31, 2013, Infosys paid $34 million settlement - the largest ever in an immigration case - for systematic visa fraud. DOJ found Infosys 'unlawfully and fraudulently used B-1 visa visitors as though they were H-1B workers in violation of U.S. immigration law.' Infosys circumvented H-1B requirements 'to increase profits, minimize visa costs, increase flexibility, obtain unfair advantage over competitors, and avoid tax liabilities.' More than 80% of Infosys's I-9 forms for 2010-2011 contained substantive violations. Settlement: $10M civil forfeiture + $24M penalty + 2 years mandatory auditing. Economic Policy Institute analysis showed in FY13, Infosys sponsored only 7 H-1B workers for permanent residence despite government approving 12,432 H-1B petitions - demonstrating H-1B workers used as 'temporary, cheaper, disposable labor' not to permanently introduce talent. Only 1-in-206 Infosys H-1B workers held US advanced degrees. Pattern: Systematic abuse of visa program to replace American workers with temporary cheaper foreign labor.

Wales was a vocal supporter of changing Wikipedia's article from 'Bradley Manning' to 'Chelsea Manning' following her coming out as transgender, writing 'We ought to very strongly defer to how people identify themselves.'

Cloudflare has published semi-annual transparency reports since 2013, detailing government requests for user data, takedown demands, and national security requests. The company has also been a vocal participant in debates about infrastructure-level content moderation, publishing detailed blog posts explaining its decision-making framework.

In May 2013, Yahoo acquired Tumblr for $1.1 billion, one of 49 acquisitions totaling $2.2 billion during this period. By 2016, Yahoo wrote down Tumblr's value by over $700 million, representing a significant failed investment and shareholder value destruction.

In May 2013, Founders Fund (Thiel's VC firm) led a $2 million funding round in BitPay, one of the earliest Bitcoin payment processing companies. This was an early institutional bet on cryptocurrency infrastructure when Bitcoin traded around $100. Thiel's libertarian philosophy aligned with Bitcoin's vision of currency free from government control - he had previously stated PayPal's original goal was to 'free currency from government intervention.'

In April 2013, Yahoo improved its parental leave policy, extending maternity leave to 16 weeks for biological mothers, 8 weeks for fathers and adoptive/foster parents, with cash bonuses for new parents. This brought Yahoo in line with other Silicon Valley companies like Facebook and Google.

Paul Graham became a major contributor to FWD.us, a tech-funded immigration reform advocacy group founded in 2013. He published the essay 'Let the Other 95% of Great Programmers In' arguing that the US should allow more foreign programmers to immigrate, stating that '95% of great programmers are born outside the US' and advocating for expanded H1B visa access.

Hykes created Docker in 2013, which popularized containerization and fundamentally changed how software is built and deployed. Docker was released as open source and became one of the most influential developer tools of the decade, enabling modern microservices architecture and cloud-native development.

In 2013, Sheryl Sandberg published 'Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead' and launched the Lean In Foundation (LeanIn.Org) to support women in the workplace through community building, education, and peer support circles. The foundation has grown to include over 2 million members and 43,000 Lean In Circles in 172 countries, partnered with Girl Scouts on the 'Ban Bossy' campaign, and launched Equal Pay Day initiatives. In 2023, Sandberg expanded the foundation's work by launching a girls' leadership program for ages 11-15.

On March 1, 2013, TCS paid $29.75 million settlement after lawsuit filed in 2006 by employees Gopi Vedachalam and Kangana Beri alleged TCS 'unjustly enriched itself by requiring all non-US-citizen employees to endorse and sign over their federal and state tax refund checks to the company and by taking unauthorised deductions from employee's paychecks.' The class action represented 12,000 H-1B visa workers. TCS forced workers to sign over tax refunds they were legally entitled to, and took illegal paycheck deductions. This systematic wage theft targeted vulnerable visa workers who feared retaliation and deportation if they resisted. Settlement represented compensation for thousands of workers systematically exploited through their visa status vulnerability.

Livingston founded the Female Founders Conference in 2013, an annual event designed to support and encourage women entrepreneurs in the startup ecosystem. The conference has continued as an annual event.

In February 2013, Yahoo issued an internal memo requiring all remote-working employees (roughly 200 of 12,000) to convert to in-office roles, stating 'Speed and quality are often sacrificed when we work from home.' The policy was widely criticized as a step backward for workplace flexibility.

After Aaron Swartz's death in January 2013, Kahle organized a memorial at Internet Archive headquarters and delivered a tribute speech defending Swartz's vision of open access. He characterized the federal prosecution as persecution for 'reading too quickly in a library.'

In January 2013, Keith Rabois resigned as COO of Square (now Block) after a male employee accused him of sexual harassment. Square stated that Rabois had 'exercised poor judgment.' Rabois denied the allegations but resigned, calling it a 'false accusation' while acknowledging a prior relationship with the employee.

Through his investment firm Cascade Investment, Bill Gates accumulated approximately 275,000 acres of farmland across 17 states since 2013, becoming the nation's largest private farmland owner. Major acquisitions include assets from the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (2017) and 100 Circles acreage in Washington state (2018), totaling over $690 million in those two deals alone. Gates said the investments aim to make farms more productive, but the scale of holdings has drawn criticism about wealth concentration in agricultural land.

In 2012, at age 19, Palmer Luckey designed the Oculus Rift virtual reality headset and launched a Kickstarter campaign that raised $2.4 million, or 974% of its original target. The Oculus Rift is widely credited with reviving the virtual reality industry after decades of dormancy. Mark Zuckerberg called it 'one of the coolest things I've ever seen' and Facebook acquired the company for $2 billion in 2014. Luckey's innovation democratized VR technology and made it accessible to consumers.

From 2011-2018, Whitman oversaw approximately 85,000 layoffs at HP/HPE, roughly 8% of the workforce. Initial announcement in 2012 included 27,000 job cuts. Despite massive layoffs, HP stock underperformed market by 30.7 percentage points during her tenure, earning her 'Most Underachieving CEO' designation.

In 2011-2012, Naval Ravikant spent six months lobbying Congress in support of the Jumpstart Our Business Startups (JOBS) Act, which eased securities regulations to make it easier for startups to raise capital. He organized a viral petition signed by 5,000 investors and entrepreneurs, hired lobbyists on contingency fees, and met with Senate and Congressional staffers. The JOBS Act was signed into law by President Obama in April 2012, with Title II lifting the ban on general solicitation for accredited investors.

In 2012, Andrew Ng co-founded Coursera with Daphne Koller, creating the world's largest MOOC platform. His Machine Learning course has reached over 4.8 million learners alone, and the platform now serves over 100 million learners globally, removing geographic and economic barriers to higher education.

Gordon and Betty Moore signed the Giving Pledge in 2012, committing to give away at least half their wealth. The Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation has donated more than $5.1 billion to charitable causes since its founding in 2000. In their pledge letter, they noted: 'In 2001 we devoted half of our wealth to create a foundation that would take risks in order to innovate and achieve meaningful results.'

The Open Data Institute has championed open government data since 2012, helping create data.gov.uk and similar initiatives worldwide. In October 2024, ODI took stewardship of the Solid Project from Berners-Lee to continue work on decentralized data architectures that give individuals control over their information.

Hashimoto co-founded HashiCorp in 2012 and created widely-used infrastructure tools including Terraform, Vagrant, Vault, Consul, and Nomad, all initially released as open source under the Mozilla Public License. These tools became foundational to modern DevOps and cloud infrastructure.

In 2011, Resig left a career in for-profit tech to join Khan Academy as Chief Software Architect, dedicating his technical skills to building free educational tools. Khan Academy provides free education to millions worldwide, and Resig has remained there for over a decade.

In 2011, Peter Thiel was granted New Zealand citizenship despite spending only 12 days in the country over the prior five years, far short of the required 1,350 days. Internal Affairs approved his application under a 'public interest' provision citing his investments and a $1M earthquake donation. Thiel stated he would continue residing in the US. The controversy, revealed publicly in 2017, raised questions about preferential treatment for billionaires. Former Minister Peter Dunne said there were 'no reasonable grounds' for granting the citizenship.

EFF created two widely-used privacy tools: HTTPS Everywhere (with the Tor Project), which automatically upgrades web connections to HTTPS, and Privacy Badger, which blocks invisible trackers. HTTPS Everywhere was installed by millions and helped push the web toward universal encryption. In 2022, EFF retired HTTPS Everywhere as major browsers had adopted HTTPS-by-default.

In 2011, Vinod and Neeru Khosla signed the Giving Pledge, committing to donate more than half their wealth to charity. Through their Amar Foundation (founded 1987), they have funded CK-12 Foundation (co-founded by Neeru in 2006), which provides free open-source textbooks and educational resources. By 2020, CK-12 had over 130 million students and teachers using its resources. The Amar Foundation donated at least $9 million to CK-12 in 2015, plus $2.7 million to IIT Delhi scholarships and $500,000 to Wikimedia Foundation.