Airbnb co-founder Joe Gebbia has joined President Donald Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) service. Gebbia, a close friend of Elon Musk and fellow billionaire, announced that he’s been tasked with “improving the slow and paper-based retirement process,” though the specifics of his involvement are unclear.
“Excited to share I’m bringing my designer brain and start-up spirit into the government,” Gebbia announced on X. “I can think of few more important ones than volunteering to improve the user experience within our government.”
Musk has complained that the current system for processing retirement applications is too slow and restrictive due to using manually checked paper records. A converted mine in Pennsylvania is currently used to store and process 400 million printed government documents, taking up 26,000 filing cabinets. The US Office of Personnel Management announced on Thursday that it had processed an entire retirement application digitally for the first time, completing the task “without printing a single piece of paper” within two days, instead of the several weeks it usually takes.
It’s unclear if Gebbia’s role at DOGE is a paid position. Gebbia remains a significant shareholder and board member of Airbnb despite leaving his operating role at the company in 2022 — the same year he joined Tesla’s board of directors. In response to Gebbia’s DOGE appointment, some Airbnb users and hosts have posted on the rental platform’s community forums with threats to boycott the service and called for Airbnb to distance itself from the co-founder.
Gebbia attracted similar ire from the Airbnb community last month when he revealed that he had voted for Trump in the November elections. Gebbia had been a Democratic donor until 2023 and scrutinized Trump for his “heartless, cruel, and immoral” family separation policy during his previous presidency. Having professed to having a “woke-up call,” his DOGE appointment further cements his pledge to support the MAGA ethos.
