Parag Agrawal's wife Vineeta Agrawal gets linked to Twitter bid by Elon Musk

tech.hindustantimes.com:

A move by Andreessen Horowitz to join Elon Musk’s bid for Twitter Inc. threatens to create a conflict for firm co-founder Marc Andreessen, who sits on the board of social-networking rival Meta Platforms Inc. Not just that, it will also link Vineeta Agrawal, wife of Parag Agrawal, CEO of Twitter too.

Andreessen Horowitz agreed to invest $400 million in the Twitter takeover deal, part of $7.1 billion in new financing commitments announced Thursday. That put one of the biggest early backers of Facebook, which changed its name to Meta last year, in position to become a new owner of Twitter.

Firm co-founder Ben Horowitz said in a tweet that Musk was perhaps the only person in the world with the “courage, brilliance and skills” to fix Twitter’s problems and “build the public square that we all hoped for and deserve.”

Andreessen Horowitz’s involvement has raised questions about the VC firm’s links to Meta, where Marc Andreessen has served as a board member since 2008. Though it’s not uncommon for Silicon Valley investors to have a hand in competing startups, potential conflicts can be more serious with publicly traded businesses, said John Coates, a professor at Harvard Law School. 

“It’s safe to say that Silicon Valley norms about conflicts -- where they are often tolerated or even encouraged, in a culture along the lines of ‘it all comes out in the wash’ -- are dangerous to carry over to the world of public companies,” he said.

A representative for Andreessen Horowitz said it planned to seek legal advice to ensure compliance with any rules around the sharing of Twitter information with the firm. 

Andreessen, 50, has come under scrutiny for previous possible conflicts at Meta, such as investing in companies -- including Oculus VR --