(Bloomberg) — Andreessen Horowitz invested $400 million in Elon Musk’s Twitter Inc. bid, backing Facebook’s rival even though partner Marc Andreessen is on the social networking giant’s board.
“Elon is the one person we know and perhaps the only person in the world who has the courage, brilliance, and skills to fix all of these and build the public square that we all hoped for and deserve,” Ben Horowitz, another Andreessen partner, wrote in a tweet.
On Twitter, Andreessen has been publicly supportive of Musk, and against the content-moderation policies that have become stricter at social media companies. Musk has said he plans to loosen the rules if he takes charge of Twitter.
Andreessen has been on the board of Facebook, now called Meta Platforms Inc., since 2008.
In that time, he’s come under scrutiny for numerous conflicts of interest, such as investing in companies, including Oculus VR, that Facebook ended up buying. At one point he was sued by investors for advising Meta Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg on how to protect his majority voting control even if he sold his shares.
Twitter, while smaller, is considered a Meta rival, competing for digital advertising dollars and users’ posts.
When Twitter’s board was evaluating whether to take Musk’s bid, they looked at the shrinkage in Meta’s valuation in order to conclude that the billionaire’s offer was fair, according to a person familiar with the matter.
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