In This Story
“Shark Tank” star and entrepreneur Mark Cuban knows a thing or two about getting a new business up and running. His next venture may be hiring the workers laid off by Tesla (TSLA-5.59%) CEO Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
Cuban has been reviewing pitches for a new business from former and current employees at the General Services Administration (GSA) and the White House, he told Politico. His eventual goal is to back some of those potential companies and help their workers leverage the skills they developed while working at the federal government as a contractor.
“I think it’s possible to out-Elon, Elon, because the people he will bring in don’t know what they don’t know,” Cuban told Politico.
The new venture would take former employees of the U.S. Digital Service, who served as an in-house consultant for federal agencies on information technology. The group was rebranded as DOGE by President Donald Trump’s executive order establishing Musk’s group.
In February, 21 staffers said they would resign instead of helping DOGE slash federal spending, including through mass layoffs. Those employees, all of whom previously had senior jobs at tech giants like Amazon (AMZN-2.26%) or Alphabet’s (GOOGL-2.33%) Google, warned that the people Musk hired were political ideologues who lacked the necessary skills to carry out Musk’s vision, The Associated Press reported.
Cuban would also enlist former workers at the 18F unit housed within GSA, which was charged with modernizing and building critical tech services for the government, including public-facing services like Login.gov and guides for federal and state agencies. The unit was dissolved on March 1.
“A couple have a real chance to turn into small companies that can leverage their expertise,” Cuban told Politico, referring to some of the workers.
Cuban envisions his tech company as profitable, although it’s unclear how that would be achieved. Federal agencies determine how much can be outsourced to the private sector and at what cost, and the Trump administration hasn’t shown an interest in remaking either 18F or USDS, according to Politico.
18F has also had a rocky history with finances. The unit fell millions of dollars short of its own revenue projections over its first three fiscal years and took home no revenue during its first year of operation, according to a 2016 report from the inspector general of the GSA.
Thomas Shedd, a former Tesla engineer now leading Technology Transformation Services, told staff that 18F “was not and has not been fully cost coverable,” according to FedScoop. In fiscal year 2024, the program was $18 million short and lost $5 million in fiscal 2025.
“Despite the losses the team was incurring, 18F with their recent hourly prices were on the very high end of the technology consulting market,” Shedd said.
Cuban told Politico that the new company would have to generate private sector revenue in addition to federal dollars. It would also likely have to rely on state and local deals until a friendlier federal government is in place, a former 18F staffer told Politico.