Following billionaire Elon Musk’s departure from the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) in late spring 2025, several of the group’s members found a new home within the federal government: the National Design Studio. Led by Joe Gebbia, a cofounder of Airbnb, a former member of DOGE, and currently the chief design officer of the US, the NDS is nested in the Executive Office of the President and has been tasked with redesigning government websites and services.
As with DOGE before it, who exactly is a part of NDS—and what they’re working on—often remains opaque. But a WIRED investigation has found that at least two members of NDS are on loan to the government and are actually employed by a recently formed nonprofit, the America by Design Foundation. This entity appears to be run by James Burnham, a former member of DOGE and the current general counsel of SpaceXAI, the artificial intelligence space company founded by Musk. It is not clear who is funding the foundation or how much money it has.
These findings raise questions about whether NDS, like DOGE, is skirting rules and regulations to bring its chosen staff into government and is functioning as an arm of the tech industry as much as a government initiative.
“The fact that we wouldn’t know who is employing and paying these people is troubling in any context,” says Don Moynihan, a professor of public policy at the University of Michigan. “Especially in the context where there is a back-and-forth movement from the private sector to the public sector.”
The White House announced the creation of the National Design Studio in August 2025 as part of a broader initiative called America by Design, which an executive order described as “a national initiative to improve experiences for Americans.” In the past year, NDS was responsible for launching websites such as TrumpRx and RealFood.gov. In addition to Gebbia, several other DOGE members have worked for or contributed to NDS. Edward “Big Balls” Coristine, one of the young engineers who formed the early core of DOGE and who entered the government at just 19 years old, now serves as the group’s head of engineering. Akash Bobba, another young engineer whose work spanned several government agencies, and Zachary Terrell, the chief technology officer at the Department of Health and Human Services, have also been part of both NDS and DOGE.
Many DOGE operatives also entered government as special government employees, a designation that allows people to work in government for 120 days out of a year without going through the full federal hiring process or requiring the usual level of transparency disclosures. NDS appears to be using a similar strategy by bringing in staff under the Intergovernment Personnel Act, a law meant to allow people with specialized skills from institutions like universities and nonprofit organizations to work in government for up to two years.
Documents reviewed by WIRED indicate that two members of NDS, Amittai Groot and John Cafazza, are actually employed by America by Design and have been detailed to the Office of Personnel Management. Both men reported to Christina Bonarrigo, who until last month was OPM’s chief of staff. According to her LinkedIn, she is now chief of staff at NDS. Bonarrigo did not respond to a request for comment.
Groot lists himself on LinkedIn as having begun work with NDS in April 2026, the same month, according to documents reviewed by WIRED, that he began employment with the American by Design Foundation. Groot’s term with OPM is also part-time and is listed on those documents as spanning from May 5, 2026, to September 30, 2026. On his LinkedIn, Groot says he was previously an “IT cybersecurity expert” at the Social Security Administration from July 2025 to April 2026. He did not respond to a request for comment.
Cafazza, according to his LinkedIn, works as a senior product designer with NDS and previously worked as a product designer at Trump Media & Technology Group, the parent company of President Donald Trump’s Truth Social platform. In documents reviewed by WIRED, Cafazza’s term in government is listed as part-time and as running from May 7, 2026, to May 7, 2028. Cafazza did not respond to a request for comment.
The agreements to loan Cafazza and Groot to OPM were signed by a representative of the America by Design Foundation.
It is not clear what projects Groot and Cafazza have been brought into OPM to work on. Last week, however, the group launched its latest project, an AI-driven website called America.gov, the goal of which is to consolidate several government services, including tax filing and passport renewal, into a single site. Coristine attributed work on the new site to Groot in a post on X. (Earlier this year, the The Guardian reported that NDS-designed websites had installed commercial software to track visitors in a way that appears to violate the 1974 Privacy Act. The code was removed during the course of The Guardian’s reporting.)
Erie Meyer, chief technologist of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau under the Biden administration, hired several IPAs, as workers brought in under the Intergovernment Personnel Act are known, during her time in government and says that generally IPAs are not meant to be at the core of any agency.
“I used to bring in AI experts in 2021, when the government did not have any. And it was important that they did not have the same job duties as a federal employee, that they weren’t taking a federal employee’s spot,” she says. “If the National Design Studio is bringing in designers and engineers now, the government is actually now full of those. You can’t just use the IPA system to evade hiring protections.”
Meyer also noted that IPAs need to be employed for at least 90 days at their home organization before they can be loaned to the government. This does not seem to have been the case for Groot, who started in government less than a month after being hired by the America by Design Foundation.
In some cases, the government will reimburse the IPA’s home organization for the cost of their salary or, in cases where their salary is substantially higher than a government salary, for part of their salary. In the documents, OPM says it will reimburse the foundation $13,691 a month for Groot’s work. This amounts to only a portion of his actual salary, which the documents indicate is too large for the government pay scale, meaning the foundation will pay the “remaining employee’s salary requirements and all benefits.” In Cafazza’s case, it appears that the Foundation will be covering the full cost of Cafazza’s employment.
Meyer says that having multiple people from the same organization who have different payment agreements with the government is “very, very weird.”
A White House spokesperson did not respond to questions about the relationships between the America by Design Foundation, OPM, and NDS. Instead, they referred WIRED to OPM, which did not respond to a request for comment.
“It makes you ask, What does this outside organization get out of this?” says Moynihan. “We should know who is paying the salaries of government employees.”
How the foundation plans to pay Cafazza—and with what money—is unclear. The America by Design Foundation was registered on August 25, 2025, just four days after the NDS was officially established, and received its exemption on September 22, 2025. Tax filings for the organization are not yet available, and it is not clear who is funding the foundation. According to documents viewed by WIRED, the foundation’s “core mission is to enhance the visual design, usability, and overall experience of web-based federal government services.”
What is clear is that James Burnham, SpaceXAI’s top lawyer, has been listed on documents as its managing director. In his biography on the website of the conservative legal group the Federalist Society, Burnham is described as the former general counsel of DOGE and having “designed the legal structure” of the organization. In the System for Award Management, the procurement website where US government contractors and grantees are required to register, the America by Design Foundation’s address is listed as a residential property in Alexandria, Virginia; when cross-referenced with Nexis, that location appears to be Burnham’s house. (Organizations seeking reimbursement from the government for their employees’ salaries while they are IPAs must be registered in the System for Award Management.) The Internal Revenue Services letter confirming the foundation’s registration is also addressed to Burnham.
While it is unclear who is funding the America by Design Foundation, Burnham serves as a direct link between it and SpaceXAI, which has received billions of dollars in federal contracts, works closely with the government to integrate its Grok AI systems with government ones, has substantial regulatory business before the government, and is run by the GOP’s top funder. Burnham is also president of Vallecito Capital, a fund that supports litigation against companies who litigants believe have broken the law with progressive policies.
Further documents from the Department of Labor also reveal that the foundation applied for an H-1B visa for someone designated as a “member of technical staff.” In these documents, Burnham is listed as the foundation’s managing director, and its address as 800 Connecticut Ave NW, Suite 300, in Washington, DC, the same address as King Street Legal, where, according to LinkedIn, Burnham was a managing partner until November 2025.
The immigration documents that list Burnham as the foundation’s managing director do not show who the H-1B visa application was for. Burnham did not respond to a request for comment. (The documents do show the visa’s start date is listed as April 6, 2026, and expires April 5, 2029, effectively spanning the remainder of the second Trump administration.) But both DOGE and NDS have a history of including noncitizens in their operations. Baris Akis, a Turkish national and a close associate of Musk’s, acted as a recruiter for the group, even attending a DOGE meeting hosted by Musk. Akis did not respond to a request for comment.
Previous reporting from WIRED also identified one apparent foreign national in the DOGE orbit. Yat Choi, an NDS member who previously worked for Airbnb, has described Canada as “home” in social media posts. Choi’s LinkedIn says that he has been a senior technologist at OPM since April 2025 and lists the role as a “contract.” On his profile on X, Choi indicates that he was a member of DOGE and NDS. Choi did not respond to a request for comment.
The salary for the role, also listed in the documents, ranges from $175,427 to $340,000. $175,427 is toward the highest end of the federal pay scale, which tops out at $197,200. Foreign citizens are not generally permitted to work in the US government, and Meyer says that while it is not unprecedented to have foreign nationals working as IPAs, it’s “not common.”
A search for the America by Design Foundation on the Department of Homeland Security’s website that tracks H1-B employment visas returns “Jennifer Michelsen America by Design Foundation.” Jennifer Michelsen is the cofounder of an eyewear company called Gunnar. Her husband is Matt Michelsen, the founder of Gothams LLC, which won a $33 million contract for the “Alligator Alcatraz” immigration detention facility in Florida and, according to reporting from the Guardian, sought further contracts from the Trump administration to develop a “fully integrated humanitarian logistics system” for the administration’s efforts to rebuild the Gaza Strip.
For her part, Meyer says that the whole setup of the foundation and the way it is bringing people into the government appears to be suspect. “The thing that you wouldn’t want is an outside organization to be able to use an external rich person’s preference to exert power over how the government works,” she says.
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