Airbnb’s co-founder is joining Elon Musk’s DOGE

Gebbia, a close friend of Musk, has praised DOGE’s work and defended it against criticisms on social media

Another billionaire is reportedly joining the Trump administration - and will help the world’s richest man slash government costs.

Joe Gebbia, the co-founder of Airbnb and a close friend of Elon Musk, is said to be joining the Department of Government Efficiency team to help Musk shrink the federal budget and reduce the federal workforce, according to the New York Times.

Friday morning, Gebbia reportedly arrived at the Office of Personnel Management’s headquarters in downtown Washington, D.C., to begin his job assisting Musk.

It is unclear what exact role Gebbia, 43, will have in the government or DOGE.

Joe Gebbia, a co-founder of Airbnb, is reportedly joining Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency team. Gebbia has been politically active since 2016 – previously supporting Democrats (Getty Images for Tribeca Festiva)

He is the latest billionaire or entrepreneur with no government background to take a hands-on role in implementing sweeping change in the new Trump administration.

It follows a trend of the president embracing notable wealthy people, especially in the tech industry, who he may have had contentious relationships with in the past.

Besides Musk, Trump has also gotten closer to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and more.

Gebbia’s net worth is estimated to be around $8.5 billion. Besides co-founding Airbnb, he also sits on the board of Musk’s Tesla and began a startup called Samara, which provides additional tiny-homes to properties.

Musk has become President DonaldTrump’s right hand man in trying to slash the federal budget (Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved)

Gebbia is politically active, having previously donated and supported Democratic candidates such as Hillary Clinton in 2016 and Joe Biden in 2020 and 2023.

During the first Trump administration in 2018, Gebbia and his fellow Airbnb co-founder issued a statement calling President Donald Trump’s anti-immigration policies “heartless, cruel, immoral and counter to American values”.

However, like Musk he has become Republican.

Gebbia admitted in January he voted for Trump which was inspired, in part, by Gebbia’s support for conspiracy theorists and anti-vaccine advocate Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

On X, he has repeatedly praised DOGE and defended it against criticisms saying it’s “unbelievable” people are protesting against it and calling legal challenges against DOGE’s sweeping access “lawfare.”