TOI correspondent from Washington: Among Silicon Valley’s elite, where tech giants have largely aligned with President Donald Trump’s alleged race-driven MAGA vision, Indian-American venture capitalist Vinod Khosla has been an outsider. His opposition to Trump has been extraordinary, with the billionaire techie sparking a political and cultural storm this week with a clear message to MAGA expert Elon Musk’s workforce: If you’re a non-white employee at Tesla, SpaceX or X, you should quit — and work for them instead.In a viral post on X, Khosla accused Musk of pushing a racial boycott version of Trump’s MAGA movement and urged employees to walk away who disagreed. Khosla responded to Musk’s comments about white people becoming a “rapidly diminishing minority”, writing, “@elonmusk doesn’t want MAGA, he wants WAGA – ‘white America great again’ – as the ‘racism is great and desirable’ paradigm.” Khosla invited “all non-whites… and all decent whites” at Musk’s companies to resign and send their LinkedIn profiles to Khosla Ventures.
The extraordinary call – partly political condemnation, partly talent raid – made clear Khosla’s status as one of the very few tech giants willing to openly challenge Trump’s growing alliance with Silicon Valley’s elite. While much of the industry – including companies like Google, Microsoft and IBM, which are led by Indian-Americans – has moved to accommodate or even embrace Trump II, Khosla has chosen defiance, framing the moment as a moral test for American capitalism.Musk responded by calling Khosla a “pompous person” and reminded him that his partner Shivon is half Indian and that he and his eldest son are named “in honor of the great Indian physicist Chandrashekhar.”The Musk conflict did not emerge alone. For months, Khosla has used his social media presence to attack Trump’s leadership, values and approach to governance. In January 2026, he described the administration’s agenda as “The Undoing Project”, accusing Trump of a “sweeping, diverse attack on American values, norms, institutions, laws, and democracy.” He has warned that fear and skepticism are being used to silence the opposition and has repeatedly urged Republicans, executives and investors to speak out.Khosla’s hostility toward Trump is deeply personal as well as political. An immigrant from India and co-founder of Sun Microsystems, he has argued that Trump’s rhetoric and policies undermine the meritocratic ideals that drove Silicon Valley’s rise. In an earlier post that resurfaced during the 2024 election cycle, Khosla said he despised Trump for his “lack of values, his pathological lies, his selfishness,” accusing him of appealing to “the least attractive parts of American society.”“That worldview now puts Khosla in sharp contrast to the current direction of the tech industry. A growing group of influential “tech bros” have explicitly or implicitly signed up for MAGA. Musk stands at the center of that universe, donating heavily to Trump’s campaign and emerging as the president’s most powerful ally in Silicon Valley. Others in Trump’s orbit include PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel, investor and podcaster David Sachs, and venture capital heavyweights Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, all of whom have praised Trump’s promises of deregulation, tax cuts and a light regulatory touch on artificial intelligence and crypto.Even officials who once considered themselves skeptical of Trump have largely shifted toward practical cooperation. The leaders of Meta (Mark Zuckerberg), Amazon (Jeff Bezos), Apple (Tim Cook), Google (Sundar Pichai), Microsoft (Satya Nadella), and IBM (Arvind Krishna) attended Trump events, increased political donations, and pledged billions in US investments, while tech lobbying has reached record levels. The calculation is simple: reach, impact, and regulatory relief outweigh the ideological inconvenience.In contrast, open protest has become rare. Apart from Khosla, only a few prominent figures – including LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman and entrepreneur Mark Cuban – have maintained a public distance from Trump. While dozens of top venture capitalists are now Trump supporters, vocal critics can be counted on fingers.The division has consequences for tech workers, many of whom remain politically liberal even as their employers move to the right. Over 450 employees at Google, Meta, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, and OpenAI recently signed an open letter demanding their CEOs “pick up the phone” to stop ICE’s excesses. Khosla’s call for non-white employees to leave Musk’s companies is exacerbating that tension, highlighting a growing gap between executive power and workforce values. As Trump settles deeper into his second term, Silicon Valley is increasingly looking like a region that has chosen alignment over resistance. Khosla, by contrast, is betting that dissent still matters – even if it leaves him standing almost alone.
