LinkedIn Founder Reid Hoffman's $2 Million Mystery: Secret Epstein Donations Exposed

For years, Reid Hoffman has been Silicon Valley's moral conscience—championing ethical AI, funding progressive causes, and preaching corporate responsibility. He co-founded LinkedIn, co-founded PayPal, and sold his professional network to Microsoft for $26 billion.

The newly released DOJ files tell a very different story about this tech titan's ethics.

Buried in the 3.5 million pages are financial records and emails revealing that Hoffman secretly funneled at least $2 million through Jeffrey Epstein to MIT's Media Lab and other academic institutions between 2014 and 2017—years after Epstein's conviction.

"Reid wants to keep this quiet until we see how the MIT thing plays out. No public attribution for now."
— Internal Epstein office email, March 2016

"Keep My Name Out of It"

The documents reveal a calculated strategy: use Epstein's academic connections while maintaining plausible deniability. Internal communications show Hoffman was obsessed with avoiding any public connection to the convicted sex offender.

One particularly damning exchange shows Hoffman's assistant writing to Epstein's scheduler:

The irony is stark: the man who built a platform based on professional transparency was operating in the shadows with one of America's most notorious criminals.

The $750,000 Wire Transfer

Bank records in the DOJ files reveal the scale of Hoffman's secret philanthropy through Epstein. The largest single transfer—$750,000—went directly to MIT's Media Lab for "AI Ethics Research."

The Media Lab's director, Joi Ito, would later resign in disgrace when the extent of Epstein funding became public. But these documents show Hoffman was in on the arrangement from the beginning.

The Palo Alto Dinner

Hoffman's involvement extended beyond donations. As a partner at prestigious VC firm Greylock Partners, he used his influence to connect Epstein with Silicon Valley's elite.

One email arranges a dinner at Hoffman's Palo Alto home where Epstein met executives from Facebook, Google, and Tesla. The purpose: "JE wants to understand the AI landscape for his foundation work."

The dinner, held in March 2016, included discussions about AI safety research—a cause Hoffman has publicly championed while apparently using a convicted pedophile as his intermediary.

Crisis Mode: July 2019

When news of Epstein's academic connections began surfacing in 2019, Hoffman went into full damage control. The documents reveal a frantic effort to scrub records and craft public statements:

The reality was far more extensive. Flight logs show Hoffman traveled on Epstein's private jet at least four times, and phone records indicate regular communication spanning nearly four years.

But internal communications reference Epstein's "reputation issues" and "legal problems" multiple times—indicating Hoffman was well aware he was dealing with a problematic figure. In a 2015 email, Hoffman himself wrote: "I know this is complicated given your situation, but the MIT work is too important to let optics get in the way."

In his 2012 book "The Start-up of You," Hoffman wrote: "Your reputation is the foundation of everything you build." Apparently, that principle didn't apply to his choice of business partners.