Washington’s tech landscape has been reshaped by a whirlwind of political change, regulatory reversals, and an AI gold rush. President Trump’s takeover of the Federal Trade Commission is seeking to combat “tech censorship,” while the Defense Department’s $1.8 billion AI investment has contractors racing to capitalize on the government’s artificial-intelligence ambitions—even as some industry giants face federal scrutiny.

The AI industry has been busy lobbying Congress to set an innovation-first agenda, with lighter regulations versus restrictive oversight. But some company heads are calling for guardrails. Among them is one of this year’s Tech Titans, Rachel Appleton of Anthropic, who says she’d like to see the government take the lead in driving transparency around AI models, especially as related to national-security risks.

Silicon Valley venture capitalists have had an outsize influence on Washington’s approach to AI. Trump’s AI and crypto czar, David Sacks, and AI adviser, Sriram Krishnan—both VC investors—along with Office of Science and Technology Policy director Michael Kratsios, a former adviser to Palantir cofounder Peter Thiel, wrote the White House’s AI Action Plan, released in July. The plan seeks to remove barriers to AI innovation in the US, including “ideological bias” and DEI efforts.

The crypto industry has also enjoyed a windfall in Washington lately. Senator Cynthia Lummis, a Wyoming Republican, has become a leader in technology in Congress, cosponsoring the GENIUS Act, which was signed into law in July to create the first digital-asset regulatory framework. Industry leaders applauded the legislation, calling it a “major step forward.”

Not all of tech has gotten the red-carpet treatment. FTC chair Andrew Ferguson is continuing his predecessors’ antitrust case against Meta, seeking to break off WhatsApp and Instagram from the tech giant. And Gail Slater, Trump’s new antitrust leader at DOJ, is pursuing remedies to weaken Google’s dominant hold over search and the online advertising market.

DC also continues to be home to a burgeoning tech hub with innovative solutions for healthcare, equity, and cybersecurity. Kirsten Brecht Baker’s company, Jeenie, is tackling language barriers in healthcare with both human interpreters and artificial intelligence. Venture capitalists Omi Bell of Black Girl Ventures and the Agora Initiative’s Amelia DeSorrento, Ann Marie Guzzi, and Kelly O’Malley are using their connections and funds to give women entrepreneurs a fair shot. J. Michael Daniel leads the Cyber Threat Alliance as it aims to stay on top of the security risks that come with AI’s rapid proliferation.

Kay Rodriguez, the creator of Outerly—a social-impact tech platform that’s getting people off their phones and into nature with IRL walks—says she’s seen the area’s tech scene continuously add more social-impact, health, climate, and consumer-tech companies to the mix.

“I’m excited to see a more diverse set of companies call the DMV home,” she told us.

Here are this year’s 253 Tech Titans.

The Starters

Entrepreneurs, Founders, and Early-Stage CEOs

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Reggie Aggarwal, Chuck Ghoorah, and David Quattrone

Cvent

CEO and Cofounder (Aggarwal), Cofounder and President of Worldwide Sales and Marketing (Ghoorah), and Cofounder and CTO (Quattrone)

Even after 25 years, Cvent remains a leader in event technology, serving more than 24,000 customers world­wide, including industry giants such as Walmart and Wyndham Hotels & Resorts. This summer, the multibillion-dollar Tysons company launched its own AI-powered tool to streamline event planning and management for clients.

Amena Ali

Optoro

CEO

Optoro has transformed retail returns from a major annoyance into an advantage for brands like Gap, American Eagle, and Best Buy. As of last fall, customers can drop off unwanted orders in select stores and smart lockers by scanning a QR code and getting instant refunds.

Randy Altschuler

Xometry

CEO and Cofounder

Altschuler is digitizing the nation’s $2.9 trillion manufacturing industry through his AI-powered marketplace that allows companies to make custom parts on demand. Since taking Xometry public in 2021, he has more than doubled annual revenue while generating over $1 billion for small and medium-size American manufacturers on the platform.

Josh Araujo

Forterra

CEO

Araujo’s Clarksburg company remains a top provider of autonomous-vehicle systems for customers such as the Defense Department, and it won a contract to produce the military’s first fleet of self-driving ground vehicles.

Jim Bankoff

Vox Media

Cofounder, Chairman, and CEO

Bankoff is fighting content theft in court while expanding his media empire’s digital footprint. Vox joined more than a dozen other publishers in February suing Cohere for allegedly training its AI on thousands of stolen articles. Meanwhile, he’s launched Eater’s first app featuring 10,000-plus maps across 100 cities, as well as a New York magazine app that unifies Vulture, the Cut, and its four other verticals.

Jennifer Bisceglie

Interos

Founder and Executive Vice Chair

Bisceglie has built Interos into a billion-dollar company serving more than 100 private- and public-sector clients who need to monitor supply-chain risks, from cyber threats to tariffs. In October, Interos closed a $40 million growth round to enhance its AI platform’s predictive capabilities, helping clients anticipate disruptions rather than respond to them after the fact.

Aisha Bowe

STEMBoard and Lingo

Founder and CEO

A former NASA rocket scientist, Bowe dedicates her time to ensuring that kids have a lower barrier to science careers. Lingo, which spun out of her tech advisory firm, STEMBoard, creates engineering kits that teach students how to build and code real devices, such as a car backup sensor.

Kirsten Brecht Baker

Jeenie

Cofounder and CEO

Nearly one in four patients struggles with language barriers. Baker’s Jeenie connects hospitals with live interpreters 24-7. With $13.6 million in funding, the platform serves clients in 150 countries through 14,000 medically qualified interpreters who speak more than 300 languages, including rare and Indigenous ones.

Michael Chasen

Class

Founder and CEO

Since Covid-era school shutdowns, virtual learning has evolved beyond an emergency pandemic solution. Led by Chasen, Class is working to blur the lines between virtual and in-person learning through seamless course setup and interactive features that keep students engaged.

Niccolo de Masi

IonQ

CEO

A physicist by training, de Masi stepped into the lead role of the $12 billion quantum-computing company earlier this year. In July, IonQ acquired Capella Space to build what would essentially be an unhackable satellite-communications network—with encryption keys that alert users if anyone tries to spy on their messages.

Matthew Desch

Iridium Communications

CEO

Desch’s McLean satellite-communications firm has carved out a niche serving disaster-relief organizations, military contractors, and others that need connectivity in challenging conditions or remote locations. In March, it partnered with José Andrés’s World Central Kitchen.

David Felsenthal

EAB

CEO

EAB (formerly the Education Advisory Board), which works with just about every higher-ed institution, is jumping into postgrad opportunities with its acquisition of Forage, a job-simulation platform used by companies like Goldman Sachs and Citibank. The deal tackles what’s become a challenging and expensive hiring process for early-career talent by connecting employers to millions of college students while giving them hands-on career exposure.

Andy Florance

CoStar Group

Founder and CEO

Florance has built his real-estate-intelligence firm into a $37 billion juggernaut with 6,800 employees, and he’s not slowing down. This past year, CoStar snatched up Visual Lease to expand its lease-management software and acquired Matterport, the 3D spatial-mapping company, to add virtual property tours to its platform.

David Fuscus

Précis AI

Founder and CEO

Fuscus spent more than 20 years as head of the public-relations firm Xenophon Strategies and now leads Précis AI as it builds AI platforms tailored to the needs of specific industries and companies. His latest product, created for PR pros, features a specialized chatbot, a campaign builder, and a repository of 55 million pages of US government data.

Fonta Gilliam

Wellthi

Founder and CEO

Gilliam’s Wellthi helps banks make their mobile apps more user-friendly for younger customers through personalized financial-wellness tools. She also gives tips to bank and credit-union leaders through her weekly Banking MilZ newsletter on how to attract and retain millennial and Gen-Z clients.

Alix Guerrier

DonorsChoose

CEO

Guerrier’s platform has turned small-dollar donations into a $1.8 billion–dollar force for public education, connecting classroom needs directly with donors. The past year brought big wins: Google funded all high-school mental-health projects last August, sending $1.5 million to more than 2,000 classrooms, while the fintech company Ripple helped raise $10 million–plus during Teacher Appreciation Week in May.

Michael Huppe

SoundExchange

President and CEO

As head of the music industry’s digital watchdog, Huppe is championing legislation to close loopholes costing American musicians millions annually, while developing the Global AI Sound Recording Registry to give artists control over whether their work is used in AI training. Under his leadership, the nonprofit has distributed more than $12 billion in royalties for creators.

E. Wayne Jackson III

Sonatype

Executive Chairman

As hackers target increasingly popular open-source software, Jackson’s software supply-chain-management platform, Sonatype, identifies com­promised tools before they can cause damage, while publishing its quarterly Open Source Malware Index to inform developers about emerging security threats.

Reid Jackson and Monica Nicolau

Unison

CEO and President (Jackson) and CTO (Nicolau)

Unison works with each cabinet agency to untangle government procurement’s notorious red tape. Over the past year, Jack­son and Nicolau have been integrating generative AI into the acquisitions process to automate tedious tasks such as compliance checks that can turn simple purchases into months-long ordeals.

TJ Leonard

Storyblocks

CEO

While competitors chase AI, Leonard is charting a different course for this Arlington digital-content company. He’s launched ethical data licensing to ensure that creators get paid when their work trains AI models, and he refuses to allow AI-generated content in Storyblocks’ library. His bet: Human-created content will outlast the generative revolution.

Alex Long

InPress

Cofounder and CTO

InPress is not your average dating app. First, users rate news articles, then they swipe on profiles curated according to their reading habits and preferences. Long turns media literacy into a game with levels and streak tracking while connecting people through shared intellectual interests rather than surface-level attraction.

Haroon Mokhtarzada

Rocket Money

CEO, Cofounder, and Chairman

Since Rocket Mortgage’s acquisition of Rocket Money (formerly TrueBill), Mokhtarzada has expanded the service beyond its roots—canceling unwanted subscriptions—to a full-featured money tracker. The app serves more than 5 million members and claims to have saved users over a billion dollars in the past five years.

Ramu Potarazu

Lynk

CEO and Chairman of the Board

Potarazu, a former Intelsat president, took the helm at Lynk last winter as it works to connect satellites directly to cellphones. This spring, he secured an investment from satellite giant SES to develop Lynk’s satellite infrastructure and tap into SES’s European customer base.

Vijay Ravindran

Floreo

Founder and CEO

Ravindran leads Floreo, a virtual-reality therapy platform aimed at strengthening social and behavioral skills in neurodiverse children. The Chevy Chase company is on track to become the first FDA-approved VR treatment for improving social skills in children with autism. By year’s end, the platform plans to expand to include ADHD treatment.

Abir Ray

Expression

CEO and CTO

For nearly three decades, Expression has been working to make electromagnetic-spectrum management—critical for everything from military radios to civilian cell service—more efficient across federal agencies.

Josh Resnik

FiscalNote

President and CEO

Resnik took over at FiscalNote with a clear vision: Policy pros need AI-powered intelligence, not just data dumps. In January, the digital-intelligence company launched its new flagship platform, PolicyNote, which already boasts more than 15 major features, including a tariff tracker developed in just two weeks after Trump’s “Liberation Day” announcement.

Kay Rodriguez

Outerly

Founder and CEO

Rodriguez is out to tackle the post-pandemic loneliness epidemic with a social platform that uses algorithms informed by personality quizzes and surveys to curate walking routes for small groups of like-minded strangers. Since September, Outerly has attracted thousands of participants across the Washington area.

Rick Rudman

Curbio

Cofounder and CEO

Rudman spotted a pain point in real estate: sellers scrambling to get homes ready for sale while juggling contractors and timelines. His Potomac-based Curbio, which thousands of agents rely on, handles everything from minor repairs to major renovations via an app that lets agents track progress in real time.

John Serafini

HawkEye 360

CEO

Serafini’s HawkEye 360 uses satellites to map out and analyze Earth’s radio frequencies. The data has led to geopolitical discoveries, such as Chinese activity near the contested Senkaku Islands and environmentally hazardous strip-mining in Niger.

Eric Stradley

Caribou

President

Caribou works to reduce the financial burden of car ownership by matching users with lenders offering more affordable auto-loan rates. Launched in 2016, the billion-dollar company has saved more than 100,000 drivers an average of almost $1,700 annually on car payments.

Matt Theurer and Lauren Stack

HyperSpectral

Cofounder and CEO (Theurer) and Cofounder and COO (Stack)

Theurer and Stack’s Alexandria startup uses AI and spectral data, or light wavelengths, which in minutes detect pathogens and contaminants that threaten food safety and health. Last year, HyperSpectral closed an $8.5 million funding round.

Steve Trundle

Alarm.com

President and CEO

Trundle leads the MicroStrategy spinoff Alarm.com as it deploys the latest tech to prevent break-ins and theft. A recent innovation: AI Deterrence, launched in January, which delivers customized verbal warnings to intruders based on their clothing and surroundings—creating the illusion of live human monitoring.

Trenor Williams

Socially Determined

Cofounder and CEO

Williams has channeled his experience as a family physician into an analytics company that examines how factors such as housing, food access, and transportation affect health. With nearly 40 million children enrolled in Medicaid and CHIP, Socially Determined recently launched My Minors, an application that helps healthcare organizations design targeted interventions by identifying where financial strain, food insecurity, and other social determinants are affecting patients.

Alex Wirth

Quorum

Cofounder and CEO

Quorum, the go-to platform for public-affairs pros at nonprofits and big companies alike, offers clients data on policy issues across international, federal, state, and local levels. Its new AI-powered assistant, Copilot 2.0, analyzes legislation in real time, tracks lawmaker dialogue, and drafts custom messaging and briefs.

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Official DC

Appointees, Electeds, and Government Officials

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Gregory Barbaccia

Office of Management and Budget

Federal Chief Information Officer

Barbaccia had a ten-year stint at Palantir and most recently was the chief information security officer at Theorem, a machine-learning-enabled asset manager. One of his early moves was writing to top federal agencies urging them not to fire their cybersecurity teams, as part of DOGE purges.

Representatives Don Beyer (D-Va.), Mike McCaul (R-Texas), Doris Matsui (D-Calif.), and Jay Obernolte (R-Calif.)

Congressional AI Caucus Chairs (Beyer, McCaul) and Vice Chairs (Matusi, Obernolte)

These four Congressional AI Caucus leaders are pushing for legislation to set guardrails around AI development while spurring AI innovation in the race against China. They have some AI chops as well—Obernolte is the only House member with a master’s in AI policy, and Beyer is pursuing his master’s in machine learning.

Senators Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.)

US Senate

As coauthors of the Kids Online Safety Act—which emerged through the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee and passed the Senate last year—they’re seeking to hold tech companies accountable for harmful content directed at children.

Craig Burkhardt

National Institute for Standards and Technology

Acting Director, Deputy Undersecretary for Standards and Technology

Burkhardt is tasked with overseeing the administration’s Center for AI Standards and Innovation, previously known as the US AI Safety Institute, started in the Biden administration—marking a shift away from safety and toward developing guidance and best practices for AI system security, as well as working with industry to develop voluntary standards.

Sean Cairncross

Office of the National Cyber Director

National Cyber Director

Cairncross has lots of experience in Republican circles, having served as COO for the Republican National Committee and as a senior adviser in Trump’s first term. While he lacks experience in cybersecurity, he’s been nominated to lead the office in charge of coordinating multiple federal agencies’ cyber postures.

Senator Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.)

Ranking Member, Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee

The top Democrat on the Commerce Committee has a history of pushing for legislation to support US-led innovation, including incentivizing domestic semiconductor manufacturing and R&D. She helped orchestrate an amendment in the large Trump budget bill that stripped an earlier ten-year moratorium on enforcing state-led AI laws, saying that Congress “can’t just run over good state consumer-protection laws.”

Brendan Carr

Federal Communications Commission

Chairman

Carr has focused on rolling back Biden-era regulations, including nixing additional environmental reviews to speed the deployment of cell towers. A Trump loyalist, he has used his perch atop the traditionally independent agency to pursue the President’s agenda, including investigating Disney and ABC for DEI initiatives, plus 60 Minutes over edits to an interview with Kamala Harris.

Senators Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.)

Chair, Senate Commerce, Transportation and Science Committee (Cruz), and Chair, Democratic Steering and Policy Committee (Klobuchar)

Few things bring Republicans and Democrats together these days, but combating online revenge porn is one of them. Cruz and Klobuchar coauthored the Take It Down Act to make the non-consensual online publication of intimate images a felony, including deepfakes created by AI. The bill had backing from First Lady Melania Trump and was signed into law this spring.

Andrew N. Ferguson

Federal Trade Commission

Chairman

Ferguson stepped into the top spot at the FTC in January after serving as a commissioner under Biden, bringing a markedly different approach than his predecessor. The former Virginia solicitor general and chief counsel for Senator Mitch McConnell has signaled he’ll ease antitrust pressure on powerful American companies while keeping a firm hand on tech giants. He also is launching an investigation into “tech censorship,” arguing that social-media platforms illegally silence conservative speech with their content-moderation policies.

Kelly Fletcher

State Department

Chief Information Officer

Fletcher, who’s been State’s CIO since 2022, was tasked with deploying the agency’s AI marketplace for employees this year. So far, it’s launched the “AI Funhouse” and “AI Proving Ground,” which lets employees securely interact with AI and data-focused tools and State Department data, Fletcher tells Washingtonian.

Madhu Gottumukkala

Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency

Acting Director and Deputy Director

In May, Gottumukkala became acting head of the nation’s agency in charge of managing the security of physical and cyber ­infrastructure, including elections. He lacks the deep cybersecurity experience of his predecessors but served previously as South Dakota’s CIO. The administration has decreased CISA’s workforce by nearly a third (1,000 employees) and has cut state funding to support election-related cyber infrastructure.

Victor Hoskins

Fairfax County Economic Development Authority

President and CEO

Hoskins has seen a boom in business in his Northern Virginia suburb, as AI, quantum, and space companies are choosing Fairfax for their headquarters, R&D centers, and innovation hubs. This includes Google announcing plans to add more office space to its Reston location, Booz Allen opening a tech hub last fall, and Unison, maker of “AI-infused” tech, choosing Reston as its home base.

Michael Kratsios

White House Office of Science and Technology Policy

Director

As Trump’s top scientific adviser, Kratsios has called for a return to “gold standard” research and claims that DEI poses a threat to “diversity of thought.” His past position as Palantir cofounder Peter Thiel’s chief of staff helped launch his tech career. He’s also served as Trump’s chief technology officer in the first administration and later as a managing director of Scale AI.

Sriram Krishnan

White House

Senior Policy Adviser on AI

Krishnan, a former venture-capitalist investor at Andreessen Horowitz, stepped into the senior policy-adviser role on AI at the White House in January and has maintained a relatively low profile while spending months developing the White House’s “AI Action Plan,” released in July. It aims to remove perceived barriers to AI development such as DEI and create streamlined permitting for data centers to power energy-guzzling generative-AI systems.

Representative Ted Lieu (D-Calif.)

Co-Chair of Congressional Caucus on Virtual, Augmented and Mixed Reality Technologies

Lieu, the highest-ranking Democrat in the House with a computer-science degree, has been an early leader on AI policy and also sits on the Congressional AI Caucus. He was the first member to introduce a bill in 2023 written by AI, urging Congress to regulate the technology. He also co-chaired the House Bipartisan AI Task Force with Representative Jay Obernolte, which culminated last year in a report offering 80 recommendations to Congress.

Senator Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.)

Chair of Senate Banking Committee’s Digital Assets Subcommittee

Lummis has been leading bipartisan efforts to establish markets for cryptocurrency. One of her bills, the GENIUS Act, signed into law in July, sets up a regulatory model for stablecoins. She’s also introduced a framework for a bill that would allow cryptocurrency exchanges to register with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and reduce the SEC’s regulation of digital currencies.

Erin Horne McKinney

DC Innovation & Technology Inclusion Council

Chair

McKinney was busy in her second year leading the DC mayor’s effort to make the tech sector more inclusive. She helped launch the DC Venture Capital Program and leverage $52 million in combined DC and private dollars to make equity investments in DC tech companies. She separately cofounded the HBCU National Innovation Consortium, a network of HBCUs fostering innovation and collaboration.

Michael Rigas and Stephen Ehikian

General Services Administration

Acting Administrator (Rigas) and Deputy Administrator (Ehikian)

Rigas and Ehikian are leading the government’s agency in charge of contracts and procurements. Rigas was named acting director in July and had previously worked at the agency and OMB during Trump’s first term. Ehikian, formerly a VP at Salesforce, is one of the many Trump appointees from the tech space aiming to modernize the federal government’s use of IT. At GSA, they’re working to overhaul the Federal Acquisition Regulation to reduce spending on government IT and are overseeing the deployment of the first federal generative-AI tool (GSAi) that has been proven to boost efficiency.

Buddy Rizer

Loudoun County Department of Economic Development

Executive Director

Over the past year, Rizer has helped balance expanding his Virginia county’s economy while also navigating public scrutiny around power and land usage as a rise in AI drives increased demand for data centers. Loudoun has 43 million square feet of data centers, with 6 million more under development.

Senators Mike Rounds (R-S.D.) and Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.)

Co-Chairs of Senate AI Caucus

The bipartisan duo leads the Senate AI group tasked with developing policy that seeks to balance the risks and benefits of artificial intelligence. The pair launched the American Science Acceleration Project this year, seeking public feedback on ways to use AI to make the US’s science and data computation ten times faster by 2030. The caucus has had 15 bills become law since its founding in 2019.

David Sacks

White House

AI and Crypto Czar

Sacks, the All-In podcast host and founder of the VC firm Craft Ventures, is the Trump administration’s first AI and crypto czar. The COO of PayPal supported legislation to regulate stablecoins to drive demand for US Treasuries. He also helped craft the “AI Action Plan” with Sriram Krishnan and OSTP’s Michael Kratsios—seeking to remove “barriers” to AI deployment and labeling “woke AI” as one of them after Google’s Gemini AI generated an image of the Founding Fathers with diverse racial backgrounds.

Gail Slater

Department of Justice

Assistant Attorney General, Antitrust Division

Slater oversees the DOJ division that’s been suing Big Tech, including a case against Apple’s alleged iPhone monopoly as well as both lawsuits against Google, in which judges have found that the company violated antitrust laws in its dominance of search and the online advertising market. Slater is a longtime Republican who worked for JD Vance in the Senate, sharing his views on needing to break up large tech companies.

Catherine Szpindor

House of Representatives

Chief Administrative Officer

One of Szpindor’s most recent efforts to modernize the House was issuing principles on the use of generative AI by offices in the chamber. The policy is intended to assist members and staff to “safeguard potentially sensitive information while also empowering them to leverage AI to better serve the American people,” Szpindor said in a statement.

Stephen Winchell

Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency

Director

Winchell joined DARPA in May and brought his experience leading the Defense Department’s AI-and-autonomy portfolio. “DARPA is the most impactful organization in the DOD due to the speed of its unique innovation process, world-class program teams, and willingness to embrace risk,” he said during his swearing-in.

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Money Folks

VC’S, Investors, and Bankers

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Jenny Abramson

Rethink Impact

Founder and Managing Partner

Abramson just closed her third fund at $260 million, cementing Rethink Impact as the country’s largest fund to exclusively back female and nonbinary C-suite leaders. Her portfolio reads like a playbook for addressing women’s needs: Winnie, a childcare marketplace, and Univfy, which uses analytics to determine IVF success rates and affordability.

Mike Avon, Jennifer Krusius, and Bion Ludwig

ABS Capital

Managing Partner (Avon) and Partners (Krusius and Ludwig)

This firm’s profile keeps getting bigger. It recently launched its ninth fund, already adding three more startups to its $2.5 billion portfolio. That includes Certify Health, a patient-engagement platform for which ABS led a funding round

John Backus, Thanasis Delistathis, and John Burke

PROOF

Cofounder, Managing Partner, and Chief Investment Officer (Backus), Cofounder, Managing Partner, and COO (Delistathis), and Cofounder and General Partner (Burke)

The Reston trio runs PROOF—short for pro-rata opportunity fund—which invests in companies that are already successful and growing rapidly. Its massive portfolio includes the sustainable grocery delivery service Misfits Market and Colossal Biosciences, which is working to resurrect extinct animals through genetic engineering.

Dan Barker, Dahna Goldstein, and Kate Goodall

Halcyon

President and CEO, Halcyon (Barker), and Managing Partners/Halcyon Venture Partners (Goldstein and Goodall)

Barker runs the ten-year-old DC incubator that backs founders trying to solve big social problems, while Goldstein and Goodall head the spinoff venture fund to write bigger checks for the same mission. Halcyon Venture Partners is raising its second fund and recently invested in Occupi, a platform that makes renting less of a headache for tenants and property managers alike.

Omi Bell

Black Girl Ventures

Founder and CEO

Bell continues to get closer to her goal of helping 100,000 Black and Brown women entrepreneurs by 2030. After a million-dollar investment from TikTok in 2023, Black Girl Ventures partnered with the social-media giant to launch a six-week business accelerator to help Black-owned businesses grow on TikTok Shop.

Joe Benevento, Tom Weithman, and Jennifer O’Daniel

Virginia Innovation Partnership Corporation

President and CEO (Benevento), Chief Investment Officer and Vice President, Investment (Weithman), and Senior Investment Director (O’Daniel)

The trio runs Virginia’s answer to keeping tech talent from leaving for Silicon Valley: an accelerator that uses public money to jump-start private investment. It’s working—they’ve funded 300-plus startups and pulled more than $2 billion into the state, including recent backing for McLean’s Spectrohm, which is making package-screening autonomous.

Jason Booma, Evan DeCorte, Jim Fleming, Patrick Hendy, Monish Kundra, and John Siegel

Columbia Capital

Partners

Columbia Capital, cofounded by telecom entrepreneur and Virginia senator Mark Warner, keeps its focus on companies working in communications, digital infrastructure, and enterprise tech—raising more than $7 billion to push into its roster of 175 companies.

Phil Bronner and Phil Herget

Ardent Venture Partners

Cofounder and Managing Partner (Bronner) and Cofounder and General Partner (Herget)

Bronner and Herget, both longtime investors, are getting ahead of the game by writing checks for services that offer specialized AI tools. Of late, that has included the workflow-automation platform Swivel and the data-query engine Roe AI.

Steve Case, Ted Leonsis, Tige Savage, Todd Klein, and David Hall

Revolution

Chairman and CEO (Case), Cofounder and Partner, Revolution Growth (Leonsis), Managing Partner, Revolution Ventures (Savage), Managing Partner, Revolution Growth (Klein), and Managing Partner, Rise of the Rest Seed Fund (Hall)

One of the area’s highest-profile VC firms, Revolution backs companies outside the dominant coastal tech hubs of Silicon Valley and New York City. Among its recent investees is the McLean precision-medicine company Zephyr AI.

Michael Clarke, Michael Graninger, and Barron Martin Jr.

Sands Capital

Managing Partners

With more than $58 billion in assets, Sands Capital makes big global bets and waits for them to pay off. In June, that strategy delivered: The legal-software company Brightflag, which they backed since Series A, sold to Dutch information-services giant Wolters Kluewer for $425 million.

McKeever “Mac” Conwell

RareBreed Ventures

Founder and Managing Partner

Conwell has built a $10 million pre-seed fund by betting on founders that traditional VCs overlook—those outside major tech hubs, often serving communities that mainstream investors don’t understand. His portfolio includes woman-led Backpack Healthcare, the nation’s largest pediatric Medicaid provider.

Lawson DeVries, Steve Fredrick, and Julia Taxin

Grotech Ventures

Managing General Partner (DeVries) and General Partners (Fredrick and Taxin)

Grotech Ventures hunts for business-to-business software companies that traditional investors often overlook—unglamorous but profitable businesses building supply-chain, cybersecurity, and fintech tools. This year, four of its portfolio companies got acquired, proving that great companies exist outside the Silicon Valley bubble.

Mina Faltas

Washington Harbour Partners

Founder and Chief Investment Officer

Faltas leads this Arlington firm as it builds the next generation of blue-chip tech companies, deploying more than $3 billion across defense, cyber, government-software, and consumer services. Last year alone, it invested over half a billion dollars across 17 companies, including Hidden Level, a drone-detection company, and Radiant, which is developing portable nuclear microreactors.

Mark Frantz and Kevin Robbins

Blue Delta Capital Partners

Cofounders and General Partners

Frantz and Robbins write big checks—$15 million and up—to money­making firms that sell tech to federal agencies. Fresh off raising $250 million for its fourth fund, Blue Delta put $25 million into Fairfax’s ITC Federal, which helps national-security and law-enforcement agencies manage their IT systems.

David Grain and Ted Manvitz

Grain Management

CEO and Founder (Grain) and Managing Director, Head of International Investments (Manvitz)

With backgrounds in telecom, Grain and Manvitz are invested in infrastructure that keeps the world connected—cell towers, fiber networks, and data centers. In March, for example, the company struck a deal to buy high-frequency radio airwaves from T-Mobile to build private networks for electric-power companies.

Dayna Grayson and Rachel Holt

Construct Capital

Cofounders and General Partners

Grayson and Holt want to reinvigorate what they call “foundational industries,” such as manufacturing, logistics, mobility, and critical infrastructure. Construct’s recently closed $300 million fund will back founders who are using software, automation, and AI to modernize those sectors.

Carter Griffin and Jon Seeber

Updata Partners

General Partners

Griffin and Seeber’s Updata Partners is one of the most successful on the business-to-business software scene, with more than $1.5 billion under management and dozens of exits under its belt, including fellow Tech Titan TJ Leonard’s Storyblocks.

Ron Gula and Cyndi Gula

Gula Tech Adventures

President (Ron) and Managing Partner (Cyndi)

Tenable vets Ron and Cyndi Gula have used $125 million of their own funds to invest in companies that defend our country’s cyberspace while educating the public about “data care,” in which everyone—not just experts—has a responsibility to protect their data.

Matthew Hanson

Pax Momentum

Cofounder and Managing Partner

Hanson’s biggest advice? Startups fail because they can’t sell, not because of a mediocre product. His Pax fund writes checks while putting founders through a sales boot camp to turn technical talent into revenue-generating machines.

Jim Hunt, Daniel Hanks, and Steve Smoot

Lavrock Ventures

General Partner (Hunt) and Managing Partners (Hanks and Smoot)

Hunt, with the help of Hanks and Smoot, leads this Arlington investment firm that targets companies working on critical issues in national security and cyber. Their portfolio spans hypersonic weapons, secure-communications platforms, and quantum infrastructure.

Jack Kerrigan, Richard Moxley, Steve Pann, Mark Spoto, and Peggy Styer

Razor’s Edge Ventures

Cofounders and Managing Partners

The Reston firm hit a major milestone this year, reaching a billion dollars in total assets after raising $560 million—all going toward national-security tech. Last year also brought a big win when the digital-signal processing company BlackSignal was bought by Chantilly tech giant Parsons in a $200 million deal.

Troy A. LeMaile-Stovall and Jack Miner

TEDCO

CEO (LeMaile-Stovall) and Chief Investment Officer (Miner)

As venture capital tightens nation­wide, TEDCO—the Maryland Technology Development Corporation—has ramped up support for its port-folio companies and other early-stage businesses statewide. Their Social Impact Funds provide both capital and personalized guidance to entrepreneurs who traditionally lack access to venture funding.

Mike Lincoln

Cooley

Vice Chair

Nearly 30 years after starting Cooley’s DC office, Lincoln continues to close major deals for East Coast startups and venture-capital funds, securing acquisitions and millions in funding for clients like the contactless-payment platform Rooam and QED Investors, a leading VC firm.

Nigel Morris and Frank Rotman

QED Investors

Cofounder and Managing Partner (Morris) and Cofounder, Partner, and Chief Investment Officer (Rotman)

The duo, who shook up the banking world with Capital One, are pros at scoping out other fintech entrepreneurs who have what it takes to reshape how people save, spend, and borrow money. With $4.3 billion under management, their Alexandria firm has invested in 250-plus companies and minted 31 unicorns, including buy-now-pay-later giant Klarna and online bank SoFi.

Jim Pastoriza

TDF Ventures

Managing Partner

Pastoriza, who cut his teeth in telecom sales, understands what enterprise customers will actually buy—and what they won’t. His crew at TDF uses their $200 million fund to back startups building tools that completely change how companies work, such as BlackCloak, which protects corporate execs from cybercrime.

Nasir Qadree

Zeal Capital Partners

Founder and Managing Partner

Qadree’s firm just closed its third fund, bringing assets under management up to $186 million across three funds focused on fintech, healthcare, and the future of work. While other VCs chase Silicon Valley trends and lean on pattern recognition, Qadree hunts for “performance signals” in overlooked markets, reaching beyond usual geographies and founders.

Fredrick D. Shaufeld and Anthony Nader

SWaN & Legend Venture Partners

Partners

Shaufeld and Nader launched SWaN & Legend with an eye for companies that touch people’s daily lives. Since 2012, they’ve backed some serious winners: Mediterranean fast-casual chain Cava, Airbnb, and mobile-payment powerhouse Square.

Michael Steed, Mark Maloney, Edward Albrigo, and Christopher Steed

Paladin Capital Group

Founder and Managing Partner (Michael Steed), Cofounder, Managing Director, and Chief Compliance Officer (Maloney), COO (Albrigo), and Chief Investment Officer and Managing Director (Christopher Steed)

Paladin is a go-to funder for companies that build digital defenses for an increasingly dangerous world, focusing on “responsible tech” that protects rather than exploits. A recent example is the data-loss-prevention startup MIND, which uses AI to automatically stop data breaches.

Devin Talbott

Enlightenment Capital

Founder and CEO

Talbott just closed Enlightenment’s fifth fund at $825 million, pushing the firm’s total assets under management to $2.3 billion—all targeted at companies in the aerospace, defense, and government-tech sectors.

Grant Verstandig

Red Cell Partners

Founder, Chairman, and CEO

When a knee injury exposed him to healthcare’s systemic issues, Verstandig sought to fix the industry from within, founding the digital health company Rally Health and later selling it in a major deal to United­Health. Now he helps other startups—in healthcare, national security, and cyber—go from simple idea to launch. His $425 million portfolio includes DEFCON AI, which landed one of defense tech’s largest seed rounds, and Epirus, valued at more than half a billion dollars.

Tien Wong

Opus8/The Big Idea CONNECTpreneur Forum

Chairman and CEO/Founder and Host

Wong’s calling card is to connect founders with the money they need, running what he claims to be the world’s largest monthly pitch event. His CONNECTpreneur gathering regularly brings in 150-plus investors eager to hear what inventors have to offer. So far, more than 600 companies have secured funding through his network.

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Policy People

Advocates, Lobbyists, and Nonprofit Leaders

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Rachel Appleton

Anthropic

Head of Federal Affairs

Appleton joined the AI company after stints with the Senate Judiciary Committee, the Justice Department, and Instacart. She says she’s focused on pushing legislation in Congress to mandate transparency of frontier AI models, such as Anthropic’s Claude, to protect against national-security risks.

Michael Beckerman

TikTok

Vice President and Head of Public Policy, Americas

Beckerman and the company’s government-affairs team have been lobbying the White House to keep the popular video-streaming app in the US after Congress passed a law seeking to ban it. So far they’ve had some success—the Trump administration has delayed enforcement of the law until September. However, amid other company departures, Beckerman plans to step down and transition to a global-advisory role within TikTok by the end of the year.

Karan Bhatia, Karen Dahut, Leigh Palmer, and Josh Marcuse

Google

Vice President, Government Affairs and Public Policy (Bhatia), CEO of Google Public Sector (Dahut), Vice President, Google Public Sector (Palmer), and Director of Strategic Initiatives for Google Public Sector (Marcuse)

Google’s public-policy team has been busy advancing its generative-AI model, Gemini. Bhatia has focused on pushing AI legislation in Washington as well as Europe and Asia. Dahut and Palmer have focused on obtaining FedRAMP’s high certification of Gemini AI tools—making it the first generative-AI offering to earn that authorization.

Stoney Burke and Ryan Dattilo

Aquia Group

Founder and CEO (Burke) and Partner (Dattilo)

Burke, formerly chief of staff for Representative Will Hurd, and Dattilo, once counsel on the Senate and House judiciary committees, met at Amazon Web Services. Burke started Aquia Group in 2018 and relaunched it in 2022. Dattilo joined the following year. Named after the sandstone in the White House, Aquia Group has been busy advising the White House and national-security agencies about opportunities and risks of AI, on behalf of Amazon Web Services and AI startup Anthropic.

Kara Calvert

Coinbase

Vice President of US Policy

As the head lobbyist for the cryptocurrency exchange, Calvert has worked hard to get the crypto legislation across the finish line, including the GENIUS Act, which created a federal regulatory framework for stablecoins. Her team has also collaborated with the Trump administration to integrate blockchain technologies within the government, and recently Coinbase partnered with the Commerce Department to make economic data more accessible on the blockchain.

Teresa Carlson and Maryam Mujica

General Catalyst Institute

President (Carlson) and Chief, Public Policy (Mujica)

Former AWS exec Carlson, and ex-Twitter and Google staffer Mujica launched General Catalyst’s policy arm last September to work more closely with governments worldwide. But rather than advocating for individual companies, the duo represents the San Francisco–based venture-capital firm’s 800-plus company portfolio in direct conversations with industry leaders and legislators about policy areas, such as healthcare, defense, and AI. So far, the institute has already expanded to India and Europe.

Mèlika Carroll

Cohere

Vice President, Global Government Affairs and Public Policy

Carroll recently took the public-policy helm of this AI enterprise company, whose clients include regulated industries like finance, healthcare, manufacturing, and energy. She has a long history of leadership at tech companies, including Intel, Micron, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, and Salesforce. She’s also cofounder of the Global Women in Leadership Network and a member of the Canadian government’s Advisory Council on AI.

Maura Colleton Corbett

Glen Echo Group

Founder and CEO

The small but mighty communications and public-affairs firm represents large companies like Google and Dish as well as smaller coalitions. In 2025, it formed two new ones: the Coalition on Digital Impact, to expand multilingualism online, and a coalition to protect vehicle owners’ rights to their car’s data.

Dante Disparte

Circle

Head of Global Policy and Operations, Chief Strategy Officer

Disparte has been a longtime advocate for stablecoin regulation in DC. At Circle, the first publicly traded stablecoin issuer in the US, he backed legislation to create a regulatory framework for digital assets. He’s testified before Congress and regularly meets with policymakers around the globe, including in Europe, Asia, the Middle East, and Latin America, to promote regulatory harmonization.

Hugh Gamble

Salesforce

Vice President, Federal Government Affairs and Public Policy

Previously a longtime Senate staffer, Gamble has worked hard to ensure that the business-to-business software company remains top of mind when it comes to AI products. The company provided input on the Office of Science and Technology’s National AI Action Plan focused on human-centered AI development.

Kathy Grillo

Verizon

Senior Vice President, Public Policy and Government Affairs

Grillo, who leads the $180 billion telecommunications company’s global, federal, and state public-policy teams, has been busy pushing for federal and state lawmakers to adopt policies around affordability and access to broadband services, use of AI, and privacy.

Mike Harney

IBM

Vice President, Government and Regulatory Affairs

Harney, a Capitol Hill veteran, joined IBM in March and has been focused on driving responsible AI governance at the company that’s home to the Watson supercomputer. He served as chief of staff for former Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo and has big shoes to fill at IBM following the departure last summer of Chris Padilla, who was IBM’s top lobbyist for 15 years.

Jacob Helberg

Hill and Valley Forum

Cofounder, Nominee for State Department’s Undersecretary of State for Economic Growth, Energy, and the Environment

Helberg plays a powerful role in advising Trump’s team on AI and tech policy, having founded the Hill and Valley forum in 2023 with VC investors Delian Asparahouv and Christian Garrett to connect Silicon Valley with Capitol Hill. The group’s goal is to fight China’s influence on the US tech industry, leading efforts to pass a law banning TikTok last year and holding an event for the White House to unveil its AI Action Plan this July. Helberg, a former adviser to Palantir CEO Alex Karp, is also nominated to a new role under Secretary of State Marco Rubio to oversee US economic development.

Fred Humphries

Microsoft

Corporate Vice President, US Government Affairs

Humphries has led Microsoft’s pol­icy work for more than 25 years. This year, he’s steered the company’s push for what it calls responsible AI and workforce readiness.

Brian Huseman and Steve Hartell

Amazon

Vice President, Public Policy (Huseman), and Vice President, US Public Policy (Hartell)

Amazon’s top lobbyists in DC, the two focus on policies related to artificial intelligence and satellite broadband. In the past year, Amazon’s $10 billion satellite internet service—Project Kuiper—launched its first satellites into space to compete with SpaceX’s Starlink. “Space is a great economic opportunity for our country,” says Huseman.

Sarah Beth Jansen

Franklin Square Group

Partner

A former Senate Judiciary and Senate Homeland Security staffer, Jansen is one of the tech industry’s top Republican advocates. She leads a team specializing in artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, and content moderation. Jansen previously worked at the Information Technology Industry Council, focused on immigration policy.

Joel Kaplan, Kevin Martin, and Brian Rice

Meta

Chief Global Affairs Officer (Kaplan), Vice President, Global Public Policy (Martin), and Vice President, Public Policy (Rice)

Meta adjusted its lobbying team after Trump took office. Kaplan, a former Republican adviser, was promoted to the top global-affairs role after Nick Clegg left, and Martin took Kaplan’s old job. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has cozied up to the Trump team, with multiple visits to the White House and the purchase of a DC home. Despite these efforts, Trump’s FTC is moving ahead with a major antitrust trial begun under the first Trump administration to force the sale of WhatsApp and Instagram.

Michael Kennedy

Intuit

Senior Vice President and Chief Corporate Affairs Officer

Kennedy leads Intuit’s team focused on the intersection of technology and policy, including AI, financial services, tax, data protection, and small-business advocacy. Intuit has been working to support the White House AI Education Pledge to provide AI materials to K–12 students over the next four years and the UK government’s AI Skills program to extend AI literacy to millions of people.

Daniel Kroese

Palo Alto Networks

Vice President, Public Policy and Government Affairs

Before joining the cybersecurity firm, Kroese held several Republican political roles, including coauthoring a book about presidential transitions. He then worked at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and now leads public-policy work for Palo Alto Networks, specifically focused on AI infrastructure by design.

Travis LeBlanc

Cooley

Partner

LeBlanc is co-chair of Cooley’s cyber, data, and privacy practice and a Democratic member of the US Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board. The Trump administration fired LeBlanc and the two other Democratic PCLOB board members in January. A federal court ruled that those firings were illegal.

Luther Lowe

Y Combinator

Head of Public Policy

Lowe, a Yelp alum, leads the voice of “little tech” in Washington—representing 11,000 founders and seeding 5,000 startups. He helped organize a Little Tech Competition Summit this year with FTC chairman Andrew Ferguson and DOJ’s Gail Slater.

Brittany Masalosalo

HP

Chief Public Policy Officer

When she worked at the White House’s vice-presidential office under both Joe Biden and Mike Pence, Masalosalo focused on national security and foreign policy. At HP, this background helps her in key legislative and regulatory discussions, ranging from AI adoption to cybersecurity standards.

Collin McCune

Andreessen Horowitz

Head of Government Affairs

McCune, who started his career in the House working for the Rules Committee and the Transportation Committee, joined the Silicon Valley venture-capital firm, valued at $42 billion, in 2022. McCune and his team have lobbied on legislation creating a stablecoin regulatory framework and for the government to help develop a national AI market.

Chandler Morse

Workday

Vice President, Corporate Affairs

Morse, a Senate veteran, is working on behalf of the cloud-based human-resources company to ensure that any policies balance AI safeguards and innovation. He says the company has supported language to reform the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act, which would modernize federal market-data reporting to focus on emerging roles and skills.

Richard Nash and Andy Halataei

PayPal

Vice President and Head of Global Government Relations (Nash) and Head of Americas Government Relations (Halataei)

Nash has worked as the top lobbyist for PayPal for the last decade, while Halataei joined in the past two years. They’ve worked to bring attention to stablecoins, after PayPal launched its own dollar-tied stablecoin in 2023. The company CEO said the effort was instrumental in the formation of the GENIUS Act, which passed the Senate and established a federal regulatory framework for stablecoins.

Edward Palmieri and Eliza Jacobs

Roblox

Senior Director, Public Policy (Palmieri), and Senior Director, Product Policy (Jacobs)

The online video-gaming platform geared toward kids is the latest tech company to establish a noticeable DC presence—opening an office next to the White House this past spring. Palmieri came from Meta, Jacobs from Airbnb.

Chan Park

OpenAI

Head of US and Canada Policy and Partnerships

Park, who joined OpenAI after stints at Microsoft and in the Senate, is working to stay on the good side of Washington as ChatGPT continues to dominate generative AI. The company’s lobbying—which increased nearly sevenfold, from $260,000 in 2023 to $1.76 million in 2024—has focused on everything from bills crafted to prevent fake AI ads in elections to boosting federal AI research funding.

Tim Powderly and Alexis Marks Mosher

Apple

Senior Director, Government Affairs for the Americas (Powderly), and Director of Congressional Relations (Mosher)

Powderly and Mosher are House alumni and longtime public-policy leaders at Apple—Powderly for 14 years, Mosher for 11. In the past year, they led lobbying efforts on behalf of the $3.44 trillion tech company on legislation related to privacy, kids’ online safety, and trade.

Jennifer Park Stout and Gina Woodworth

Snap

Vice President, Global Public Policy (Stout), and Senior Director, Americas Public Policy (Woodworth)

Stout and Woodworth have been busy on Capitol Hill this year as lawmakers have advanced legislation aimed at keeping kids safe on social media. The company backed the Take It Down Act, which criminalizes the sharing of AI-generated and non-consensual intimate images.

Nate Tibbits

Qualcomm

Senior Vice President, Global Government Affairs and Corporate Responsibility

Tibbits has led Qualcomm’s public-policy team for more than a decade and has been busy. The chip maker, along with competitors Intel and Micron, has urged the administration not to enact tariffs on imported semiconductor chips and related materials. Qualcomm warns that retaliatory actions against American companies by foreign governments could threaten US global semiconductor leadership.

Kathi Vidal

Winston & Strawn

Partner

Vidal is one of the top intellectual-property and patent attorneys in the country. She previously served as US Patent and Trademark Office director under Biden. Before her government stint, she managed Winston & Strawn’s Silicon Valley office.

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Big Business

Movers and Shakers

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Craig P. Abod

Carahsoft

President and Founder

Abod has created what’s become one of the nation’s fastest-growing and largest private government IT distributors, generating nearly $15.5 billion in revenue. Despite facing DOJ allegations over fraudulent government-contract practices, the Reston company continues to rack up millions in Defense deals.

David Appel and Dave Levy

Amazon Web Services

Vice President, US Federal and Global National Security and Defense (Appel), and Vice President, Worldwide Public Sector (Levy)

Appel and Levy oversee AWS’s deepest government partnerships. Appel focuses on the DOD, including work with the Defense Innovation Unit to lower its carbon footprint and reduce mission costs. Levy oversees multiple public-sector initiatives, headlined by a $50 million campaign to accelerate the adoption of generative AI.

Thomas A. Bell

Leidos

CEO

Bell leads the Reston government-contracting company, which boasts approximately $16.7 billion in annual revenue and 47,000 employees worldwide. In May, Leidos bought Chantilly-based Kudu Dynamics to offer more advanced AI-enabled cyber capabilities for warfighters.

Matt Calkins

Appian

Founder and CEO

Since starting Appian in 1999, Cal­kins has turned his Tysons startup into a $663 million public enterprise. His AI-powered platform helps organizations streamline operations, winning over clients including eight of the world’s ten largest non-Chinese banks, eight of the biggest pharmaceutical companies, and every cabinet-level federal agency.

Mark Ein

Kastle Systems

Executive Chairman

Ein leads the Falls Church provider of security systems for commercial real estate. Working with Mayor Muriel Bowser and MPD chief Pamela Smith, Kastle integrated its 1,000-plus camera-surveillance network into DC’s new Real-Time Crime Center to help police access live footage from commercial properties during emergences.

Amy Gilliland

General Dynamics Information Technology

President

Gilliland heads the global technology company and government contractor, valued at $8.75 billion. It recently acquired Iron EagleX, a leading provider of AI, cyber, software development, and cloud services. GDIT, headquartered in Falls Church, also expanded partnerships with AI, cyber, software, and quantum companies to help make their government services more innovative.

Zach Leonsis

Monumental Sports & Entertainment

President, Media and New Enterprises

Leonsis, who drives the company’s tech strategy, is revolutionizing how DC sports fans watch their teams. His MNMT network—holding local TV media rights for the Capitals, Wizards, and Mystics—saw 37 percent viewership growth and became the first outside Las Vegas to integrate real-time sports betting during livestreams. Beyond broadcasting, he also leads Monument’s e-sports division.

Kim Lynch

Oracle

Executive Vice President, Government Defense and Intelligence

Lynch, who joined Oracle in 2023, leads the cloud-computing giant’s push into the government’s most sensitive computing environments, aiming to modernize cloud infrastructure for defense and intelligence agencies. The Booz Allen vet has focused on breaking down data silos that have long plagued the intelligence community, with recent wins including a contract to migrate the Army’s personnel and pay system to Oracle’s cloud service.

Phebe N. Novakovic

General Dynamics

Chairman and CEO

The Reston contractor has 117,000-plus employees in more than 60 countries, working in aviation; shipbuilding; combat vehicles and munitions; and tech and IT solutions. Novakovic was once an intelligence officer and a director at JP Morgan Chase.

Horacio Rozanski

Booz Allen

Chairman, CEO, and President

Rozanski heads the $13.6 billion contractor as its 35,000-person workforce tackles everything from quantum clocks for GPS-denied environments to wearable tech for astronauts. In his 30-year tenure, he has transformed the McLean company from a simple consulting firm into a massive advanced-technology company. A recent breakthrough: launching the first large language model in space.

Michael J. Saylor

Strategy (formerly MicroStrategy)

Executive Chairman

The largest publicly traded holder of Bitcoin expanded its treasury to 628,940 BTC recently. Saylor’s company used generative-AI design and launched a series of Bitcoin-backed securities—STRK, STRF, and STRD—creating a new class of digital-asset-linked preferred stocks that have raised billions in capital. He’s also advised senior officials at the White House’s 2025 Digital Assets Summit, advocating for Bitcoin as a strategic-reserve asset.

Husein Sharaf

Cloudforce

Founder and CEO

Sharaf, a native of Fairfax, landed his first job at Booz Allen Hamil­ton at age 18 without a college degree and continued his fast-rising career at the Commerce Department before founding Cloudforce in 2010. The cloud-consulting company teamed up with Microsoft to develop nebulaONE, a first-of-its-kind platform that lets students, researchers, and healthcare workers use generative AI without worrying about data breaches.

Jim Taiclet

Lockheed Martin

Chairman, President, and CEO

A former Air Force pilot, Taiclet knows firsthand about the jets that his $99 billion defense-and-aerospace company helps manufacture. The Bethesda company—the largest government contractor in terms of revenue—has lately focused on integrating AI, thanks to 1,500-plus AI/machine-learning developers who work for the company.

Allen Thompson

Intel

Vice President, US–Canada Government Affairs

Thompson leads US public-private partnerships for the tech giant, which is investing $100 billion in semiconductor manufacturing in this country. Separately, the company announced last fall that it had finalized $7.86 billion in direct funding from the 2022 US CHIPS and Science Act, the largest tranche given to any company, which Thompson and his team played a key role in securing.

Toni Townes-Whitley

SAIC

CEO

A veteran of Microsoft, Townes-Whitley has been leading the government contractor in charge of engineering, digital, and AI offerings to defense and civilian markets, including the DOD, since 2023. She oversees more than 24,000 employees around the world, who generate an annual revenue of over $7.5 billion.

Kathy J. Warden

Northrop Grumman

Chair, President, and CEO

Warden, a veteran of General Dynamics, leads Northrop Grumman’s approximately 100,000 global employees and pulls in an annual revenue of $41 billion, made up largely of defense and aerospace government contracts.

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Trade Groups, Media, and Think Tanks

Nonprofits and other organizations promoting and reporting on ideas

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Dmitri Alperovitch, Maureen Hinman, and Sarah Stewart

Silverado Policy Accelerator

Cofounder and Chairman (Alperovitch), Cofounder and Executive Chair (Hinman), and CEO and Executive Director (Stewart)

Alperovitch, cofounder of the cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike, teamed up with former US Trade Representative negotiators Hinman and Stewart to take on the thorniest geopolitical and technology challenges facing companies today. The bipartisan think tank is focused on AI threats, the semiconductor chips race, the future of warfare, cyber­attacks, and industries of the future.

Perianne Boring and Cody Carbone

The Digital Chamber

Founder and Chair (Boring) and CEO (Carbone)

In 2014, Boring launched the blockchain and digital-asset trade association, which now has more than 200 members, including Micro­soft, Cisco, and IBM. The group lobbied for the CLARITY Act, which would set a regulatory structure for the sale of digital assets at the SEC and CFTC.

Summer Mersinger and Peter Van Valkenburgh

Blockchain Association and Coin Center

CEO, Blockchain Association (Mersinger), and Executive Director, Coin Center (Valkenburgh)

Cryptocurrency is having a moment, with the Trump administration rolling back Biden-era SEC crypto rules. The Blockchain Association, a trade group whose members include the cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase, and Coin Center, a nonprofit focused on crypto policy, are busy trying to ensure that any legislation and market regulation of stablecoins provides clear rules and supports innovation. The Blockchain Association, led by former CFTC commissioner Mer­singer, applauded advancements of the GENIUS Act to create a new digital-asset regulatory framework.

Brad Carson and Eric Gastfriend

Americans for Responsible Innovation

President (Carson) and Executive Director (Gastfriend)

Carson, undersecretary for the Army under Obama, and Gastfield, a digital-health tech entrepreneur, launched their nonprofit in 2024. It seeks to strike a challenging balance—enacting guardrails around AI safety while ensuring that America remains competitive in the global AI race.

Adam Conner

Center for American Progress

Vice President, Technology Policy

Conner has held jobs at the intersection of tech, politics, and policy for 18 years in Washington. He founded Meta’s DC office in 2007 and was Slack’s first employee here. He now leads tech-policy programs under the progressive CAP, focusing on a project mapping the potential economic impact of AI and identifying dangerous uses of the emerging technology.

Steve DelBianco

NetChoice

President and CEO

DelBianco is an industry veteran who has led Washington’s most litigious tech trade group for more than 23 years. His association is involved in the most active lawsuits it has pursued to date—at least 17 in state and federal courts—seeking to protect member companies, such as Google, Meta, and X, from laws it claims are attempting to curtail free speech and expression online.

Victoria Espinel, Craig Albright, and Aaron Cooper

BSA, The Software Alliance

CEO (Espinel), Senior Vice President, US Government Relations (Albright), and Senior Vice President, Global Policy (Cooper)

Espinel has led the enterprise-software trade association’s efforts to promote AI adoption around the world. Espinel, Albright, and Cooper have worked with the US government and traveled to Japan, India, and Paris (for the AI Summit) in the past year to meet with government leaders and stress the importance of AI adoption for their economies. They’ve also laid the groundwork to promote the development of quantum computing and are working with countries throughout Europe, the Middle East, and Africa.

Alexandra Reeve Givens

Center for Democracy and Technology

President and CEO

Head of the tech-advocacy nonprofit since 2020, Givens has been pushing back on the Trump administration’s efforts to quash free speech and civil liberties, including DOGE’s unprecedented access to public and private information. She was on the steering committee for the 2025 AI Action Summit in Paris, focused on safe use of new AI technologies.

Karen Kornbluh

Center for Democracy and Technology

Visiting Fellow

As a visiting fellow at the tech think tank, Kornbluh works with global economic organizations and AI-safety institutes to set the norms for regulating AI. She was deputy White House chief technology officer for Biden and also founded the Digital Innovation & Democracy Initiative at the German Marshall Fund. Kornbluh is currently a senior adviser for emerging technology at the Milken Institute.

Adam Kovacevich

Chamber of Progress

Founder and CEO

Kovacevich, a former Google lobbyist, created his tech trade group as the progressive antidote to conservative-leaning NetChoice. This year, he says he’s focused on repairing the relationships between tech companies and Democrats after CEOs were turned off by “the Biden administration’s war against the tech industry.” He’s also fighting the growing number of what he sees as “anti-tech” bills in blue states.

Nicol Turner Lee

Brookings Institution

Senior Fellow, Governance Studies, and Director, Center for Technology Innovation

Lee, who is focused on emerging tech-policy issues, has dedicated her career to advancing equal access to new technologies. She founded the AI Equity Lab to promote inclusive AI models and applications in the US and the Global South, and she’s developing the first “(un)Hidden Figures Repository” to highlight diverse experts contributing to the equitable design and use of technology.

Billy Mitchell

Scoop News Group

Executive Editor

Billy Mitchell leads the editorial operations of FedScoop, Defense­Scoop, AIScoop, CyberScoop, StateScoop, and EdScoop. His team of reporters has expanded the company’s readership with their in-depth coverage of the DOGE layoffs of government workers and the impact of the cuts on federal IT systems and data security.

Linda Moore

TechNet

President and CEO

Moore, who has led the tech trade group for more than a decade, says she continues to champion AI policies to support American innovation and strengthen the US economy and national security. So far this year, the group’s lobbyists have engaged with state lawmakers on 723 tech bills across all 50 states, DC, and Puerto Rico.

Travis Moore

TechCongress

Founder and Executive Director

Moore’s organization helps place fellows in lawmakers’ House and Senate offices, which often lack expertise in tech and AI policy. His team has placed 16 fellows this past year, focused on AI policy, emerging technology, cybersecurity, data privacy, and global competition. Since its inception in 2015, TechCongress has placed 130 fellows, and two-thirds have landed jobs in the government or in the social-impact sector.

Ajit Pai

CTIA

President and CEO

The former FCC chair during Trump’s first term now leads the country’s largest wireless-mobile-communications trade association, with members including AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile. His group successfully secured future wireless-spectrum auctions in Congress’s reconciliation package that Trump signed on July 4.

Katie Paul

Tech Transparency Project

Director

Paul has led research that exposes harmful content from Big Tech for the watchdog organization, including dozens of sanctioned individuals and designated terrorist groups that were fundraising through X Premium. The group’s research has influenced lawmakers and led to policy changes at major tech platforms.

Morgan Reed

ACT | The App Association

President

Reed has led this trade group, which represents 5,000 small software developers and tech companies, for two decades. He opposed legislation to set an age-verification standard for app stores and backed a bill—the WEAR IT Act—that would allow flexible and health savings accounts to be spent on wearable health tech.

Eric Schmidt and Ylli Bajraktari

Special Competitive Studies Project

Chair (Schmidt) and President and CEO (Bajraktari)

Schmidt, Google’s former CEO, launched SCSP in 2021 to help ensure the US’s success in the global race on AI and other emerging tech. Bajraktari, who leads the group, previously was executive director of the National Security Commission of Artificial Intelligence. SCSP hosted its second AI+ Expo in DC in June, drawing 15,000-plus attendees from the public and private sectors to explore the future of AI.

Gary Shapiro, Kinsey Fabrizio, Tiffany Moore, and Michael Petricone

Consumer Technology Association

CEO and Vice Chair (Shapiro), President (Fabrizio), Senior Vice President, Political and Industry Affairs (Moore), and Senior Vice President, Government and Regulatory Affairs (Petricone)

The trade group that throws the industry’s biggest conference every year—CES—has been vocally opposed to Trump’s tariffs, which Shapiro, Moore, Fabrizio, and Petricone say drive up inflation and hurt American businesses and consumers. Fabrizio was promoted last year to president, with Shapiro relinquishing the title and retaining the CEO role, which he’s held for more than 40 years.

Jonathan Spalter

USTelecom

President and CEO

Spalter leads the trade group representing America’s broadband companies. In June, he backed a major win in the Supreme Court for the FCC that upheld the constitutionality of the Universal Service Fund, a telephone-service program for low-income individuals, while also calling for an update to the program and urging tech companies to chip in to its funding.

Kara Swisher

Vox Media

New York Magazine Editor-at-Large and Podcast Host

Swisher has built a name as one of the most influential tech-policy podcasters, hosting two successful shows—On With Kara Swisher and Pivot With Kara Swisher and Scott Galloway. In the past year, she’s interviewed influential tech leaders, including Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman and Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff.

Elham Tabassi

Brookings Institution

Director, Artificial Intelligence and Emerging Technology Initiative

Elham joined Brookings in March and has focused on bridging technical understanding with policy implementation, establishing evaluation methodologies for AI systems, and promoting responsible AI. She previously was chief AI adviser at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), where she helped establish a consortium of 290 organizations spanning industry, academia, civil society, and more working to develop guidelines and standards for AI measurement.

Jennifer Taylor

Northern Virginia Technology Council

President and CEO

As leader of one of the country’s largest tech councils, Taylor has worked to influence the White House’s national AI strategy—pressing for high-quality data, skilled talent, improved digital infrastructure, and responsible governance. “NVTC is helping shape the future of AI—at home and on the world stage,” she says.

Kate Tummarello

Engine

Executive Director

Tummarello’s group advocates for tech startups. The former Politico reporter said her team has been busy this year, including flying in entrepreneurs to DC in May to meet with lawmakers and the Trump team to call for a pro-startup AI agenda.

Miriam Vogel

EqualAI

President and CEO

Vogel wears several important hats in Washington’s AI universe. As head of EqualAI, she leads the nonprofit’s work on correcting and preventing unconscious bias in AI. She’s also chair of the National AI Advisory Committee (NAIAC) within NIST, which provides recommendations to the president on AI. Lastly, she’s an adjunct professor of tech law and policy at Georgetown Law.

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Cyber World

Inventors, Agitators, and Defenders

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Bryson Bort

Scythe

Founder and CEO

With 25 years of cybersecurity experience, Bort has made it his mission to educate industry experts, policymakers, and the public on how to better defend critical infrastructure such as water-supply systems. Scythe allows clients to run simulated cyberattacks against their own networks to assess their defense capabilities.

Thomas P. Bossert

Trinity Cyber

Cofounder and President

Instead of detecting threats after they happen, Trinity Cyber has developed “automated preventive control” to stop them from happening in the first place. Bossert, a former Homeland Security adviser, says the tech has attracted clients among businesses, federal agencies, and universities in the US and Australia.

Ken Carnesi

DNSFilter

Cofounder and CEO

Carnesi’s platform, used by more than 40,000 organizations worldwide, strips out malicious content at the internet’s domain-name-system layer—essentially, the web’s address book—to block users from accessing dangerous websites and malware.

Nichole Clagett

Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency

Deputy Associate Director, Cyber Incident Reporting Program Management Office

When Biden signed the Cyber Incident Reporting for Critical Infrastructure Act (CIRCIA) in 2022, Clagett, a regulatory attorney, was tasked with writing the rules for how companies that run essential services must report cyber incidents to the government—then actually implementing them. Her focus: streamlining the reporting process so the government can get a better picture of the biggest threats to the country’s infrastructure.

J. Michael Daniel

Cyber Threat Alliance

President and CEO

Daniel parlayed his experience as a National Security Council cyber­security coordinator into building a coalition of three dozen cybersecurity providers that share intelligence on emerging threats. A big focus this year is addressing the dual challenge of AI-assisted cyberattacks and vulnerabilities in AI systems.

Robert Johnston

N-able

General Manager, Adlumin

In November, Johnston, a former Marine Corps officer, struck a $266 million deal with the Boston IT software company N-able to integrate Adlumin’s threat-detection-and-response services into its platform, serving 25,000 clients worldwide.

Lisa Kaplan

Alethea

Founder and CEO

Kaplan, a political-disinformation expert, runs Alethea, which combats misinformation campaigns and social-media manipulation targeting businesses in real time. This spring, an investigation in partnership with the Independent revealed more than 1,000 misleading TikTok videos about the risks of birth control—some were subsequently removed.

Robert M. Lee

Dragos

Cofounder and CEO

Lee heads this Hanover, Maryland, cyber­security giant as it protects industrial systems around the world from ransomware attacks. Last fall, the company expanded its services to the US government with the creation of its public-sector arm.

Dave Merkel

Expel

Cofounder and CEO

Merkel has built a billion-dollar firm by combining three decades of cybersecurity expertise with client care—a philosophy he’s not abandoning for the AI era. Sure, AI is now standard in cybersecurity, but Merkel cautioned in a July Forbes op-ed that it “isn’t a magic bullet” and shouldn’t eclipse what really matters: human oversight and solid customer service.

Grant Schneider

FGS

President and CEO

After four years at Venable, Schneider brought his cybersecurity expertise to the La Plata, Maryland, defense contractor as it provides intelligence analysis and engineering to clients such as the Navy, the Secret Service, and the Indo-Pacific Command.

Steve Vintz

Tenable

Co-CEO and CFO

Vintz, who’s been helping lead Tenable since December, has focused on advancing the $3.5 billion giant’s position in a competitive industry. In February, for example, the Columbia firm acquired Vulcan Cyber to create what it believes will be “the most comprehensive exposure-management platform.”

Rick Wagner

Agile Defense

CEO

A former Microsoft exec, Wagner leads Agile Defense as it helps federal agencies modernize often outdated IT systems and protect them from cyber threats. This year has featured big moves including the doubling of its workforce through acquisition of the McLean defense data-analytics firm Intellibridge and the launch of its internal R&D shop, Agile Labs.

John B. Wood

Telos

CEO and Chairman of the Board

Thirty years ago, Telos was near-bankrupt. But under Wood, the Ashburn cybersecurity company has grown to serve big clients such as the State Department, AWS, and Verizon, becoming the official messaging system for the Defense Department and the second-largest TSA PreCheck enrollment provider.

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The Connectors

Organizers, conveners, and facilitators

Doug Anderson

DCA Live

Founder and President

Anderson has made himself one of the DC tech scene’s chief connectors through his wide-reaching network of conferences and meetups. His second annual CapitalCapital conference drew more than 500 attendees, cementing it as the region’s biggest local tech and VC gathering. Beyond the marquee event, he hosts regular meetups and salon-style roundtables for venture capitalists, founders, and tech execs.

Allie Brandenburger

TheBridge

Cofounder and CEO

Brandenburger has built TheBridge into a national network connecting tech, policy, and political pros who want to collaborate to solve issues in the industry. With her background in both the policy and corporate worlds, she aims to break the barrier between often incompatible languages of innovation and regulation. Starting in DC and the Bay Area, the organization has expanded to five more cities across the country.

Amelia DeSorrento, Ann Marie Guzzi, and Kelly O’Malley

The Agora Initiative

Cofounders and Co-Organizers

DeSorrento, Guzzi, and O’Malley decided to tackle venture capital’s gender gap head-on. Their solution: the Agora Initiative, launched last year to connect female entrepreneurs with funders and influencers through venture challenges, dinners, and happy hours. With backing from sponsors such as JP Morgan and the DC Tech & Venture Coalition, their Female Founder Showcases have already drawn 300-plus attendees.

Anthony Jamison

CivStart

Cofounder and CEO

After a decade helping state and local governments tackle technology challenges, Jamison launched the nonprofit CivStart to bridge the gap between govtech startups and municipal leaders. In five years, his organization has hosted an accelerator program, a community hub, and events that have drawn more than 970 attendees while helping 56 startups raise $152 million in venture capital.

Rachel Koretsky

DC Startup and Tech Week

Director and Executive Producer

An entrepreneur herself, Koretsky helps organize the largest startup and tech conference in the region, which has grown to 16,000-plus members under her leadership. Over the past decade, DC Startup & Tech Week has hosted more than 150 sessions and 300 speakers, bringing together early- and growth-stage founders and investors.

Kevin Morgan

Washington DC Economic Partnership

Senior Vice President, Tech Sector Attraction and Retention

DC Tech & Venture Coalition

Founder, Board Chair, and President

Morgan has made it his mission to establish DC as a vibrant tech hub through community building and corporate partnerships. To do this, he splits his time between drawing companies to the region with the Washington DC Economic Partnership and accelerating growth for local startups through the DC Tech & Venture Coalition. His DC Tech Meetup—one of the largest meetups of its kind—showcases local innovation.