Do we like them?

Do we like Marc Andreessen?

Our score: 5 out of 10. Real giving and nothing against queer people on the record, set against a manifesto that sneers at ethics and big political money fighting AI safety rules.

Andreessen is the bloke who helped make the web browser a thing, co-founded Netscape, then turned venture capitalist as half of Andreessen Horowitz. He also sits on the board of Meta. That's the career arc: build the thing, sell the thing, bankroll the next thing, and these days shape the politics around it.

The harm check starts with his 2023 Techno-Optimist Manifesto. In it he lists social responsibility, trust and safety, tech ethics and sustainability among the enemies of progress, and writes that “Any deceleration of AI will cost lives.” Critics like Kara Swisher called it a straw man, while a supporter praised him for saying what others can't. Where you land depends on whether you read it as a pitch for building faster or as a brush-off of the people who keep tech safe.

On politics, Andreessen and Ben Horowitz told staff in July 2024 that they planned significant donations to PACs backing Donald Trump, per CNBC. Notably, he'd tweeted “I'm with her” for Hillary Clinton in 2016, so this was a swing. His firm is also among the biggest backers of Leading the Future, a pro-AI PAC that targeted New York's Alex Bores, a co-sponsor of the state's RAISE AI safety bill. Being a Republican donor isn't a fail on its own; the worry is money aimed at blocking safety rules.

The part that matters to us: nothing turned up from him against LGBTQ+ people or trans rights, and no slide into vaccine or election conspiracy in what we read. The tabloid-adjacent stuff, like a 2021 claim that he used a slur on Clubhouse, was a reporter's error she later said she regretted, so it doesn't count. That said, we found nothing on climate in his own words beyond the manifesto line on sustainability, so that part of the record is thin.

Lately he's been more cringe than harmful. In March 2026 he said he does “zero” introspection, which The Nation's David Futrelle pulled apart as a permission slip for avoiding accountability, tying it to his firm's defence investments. In November 2025 he reposted Pope Leo's call for AI builders to have moral discernment alongside a mocking meme, then deleted it after backlash.

In court, Meta shareholders sued Zuckerberg, Andreessen and other directors and officers over Facebook's privacy fines, seeking US$8 billion. The defendants denied it, calling the claims “extreme”, and the case settled in July 2025 on undisclosed terms, so no court ruled against him.