Former members of Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency who set out to drain the Washington “swamp” have since turned their brief government stints into lucrative private-sector ventures – and some are now being warned to prepare for scrutiny if Democrats take control of Congress.
A Washington Post analysis found that roughly two dozen former DOGE staffers have parlayed their government experience into founder roles, executive jobs or large stakes in startups seeking government contracts or approvals.
Startups founded or backed by DOGE alumni have raised at least half a billion dollars, with some drawing valuations in the billions despite largely untested products and inexperienced founders. At least six DOGE alumni have registered on Sam.gov, the federal contracting portal.
But the DOGE connection could become a liability. Two people familiar with the founders’ investment pitches told the Post that investors have advised some founders to prepare for a potential midterm sweep by avoiding the appearance of impropriety or hyper-partisanship.
“Everything has been done fairly, cleanly, openly, transparently and assuming that anyone could be the poster child … for congressional ethics targets,” one of those people said.
Among the most prominent ventures is Cathedral, an AI-enabled cybersecurity firm valued at $1.4 billion that hopes to sell to government agencies, including the Pentagon. Co-founder Gavin Kliger served as the Defense Department’s chief data officer until April 2026 and began fundraising for Cathedral by May.
A 2020 Pentagon instruction bars senior employees from seeking government contracts for up to two years after leaving, though Jeff Hauser of the Revolving Door Project said fundraising would likely fall into a gray area.
Others have landed in industries dependent on government approvals. Elie Mishory, who previously worked at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, became chief regulatory officer at sports prediction market Novig, whose CFTC approval was touted as “among the fastest in CFTC history.”
Norm Eisen, a former White House ethics lawyer for Barack Obama, said the scale of investment is unlike anything he has seen.
“It has the appearance that they found a new way to monetize government service that is far beyond anything lobbyists ever dreamed of,” Eisen said.
Hauser argued that current ethics rules were never designed for DOGE’s short-term arrangements, which gave staffers an inside look at federal agencies in mere months.
“Washington is kind of vulnerable to this because a lot of our ethics laws were built in the 1970s [and] haven’t been updated since,” Hauser said. “There’s going to need to be a serial reconsideration of ethics laws.”
DOGE fell far short of Musk’s promised $2 trillion in cuts, but investors appear unbothered. One person familiar with the pitches said it’s “less about what they got done” than the mindset the founders developed inside government.
Cathedral declined to comment.
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