By David Jeans
NEW YORK, July 22 (Reuters) – A team of former DOGE employees have raised a major funding round for a startup that aims to use AI to expand U.S. military cyber capabilities, three sources with knowledge of the matter told Reuters.
The startup, called Cathedral, was launched in recent months with a plan to secure U.S. government contracts to bolster AI-driven cyber operations, including offensive and defensive capabilities, against U.S. adversaries such as China, two of the sources said. As part of the plan, the company is looking to acquire a data center, or partner with a data center provider that can provide dedicated compute power to the cyber operations.
The company, co-founded by former Department of Government Efficiency staffers Gavin Kliger, Luke Farritor, Marko Elez and Jack Stein, closed on a $160 million funding round in recent weeks that valued the company at $1.4 billion, three sources said. Andreessen Horowitz and Sequoia Capital led the round, with both firms taking board seats, two of the sources said.
The funding round underscores investor enthusiasm around startups founded by DOGE alumni, who spent much of 2025 upending the federal government with firings and cost-cutting operations in which more than 250,000 people left the federal workforce. Last month, Andreessen Horowitz also led an investment into another DOGE team-led startup called Special, which hopes to bring DOGE-inspired cost-cutting efforts to the corporate world, according to a blog post on Andreessen Horowitz’s website.
Cathedral’s valuation, its name and mission, as well as the involvement of Elez, the former DOGE staffer, have not been previously reported. Vanity Fair earlier reported that the other founders had started an AI-focused national security company.
A Cathedral spokesperson declined to comment. Andreessen Horowitz and Sequoia did not respond to requests for comment.
CLOSE TIES TO TRUMP ADMINISTRATION
Cathedral’s founding team maintains deep ties to the Trump administration and national security officials, including at the Pentagon. Until recently, Kliger was the chief data officer at the Pentagon, where he was involved in the department’s highly publicized legal fight with Anthropic over how its AI technology would be used by the military, according to multiple people familiar with the matter.
Luke Farritor, who was an intern at SpaceX, oversaw cost cutting at the General Services Administration during his DOGE tenure. Marko Elez also worked at SpaceX before joining DOGE, where he worked at the U.S. Treasury Department, raising concerns from a judge after accessing highly sensitive material. Elez quit DOGE after racist posts he made on a social media account were reported by the Wall Street Journal, and then was rehired after President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance advocated for his reinstatement.
Cathedral has the potential to secure major government contracts and partnerships, one source said, at a time when the Pentagon and other government departments like the Office of Strategic Capital have taken a more active role in partnering with startups to accomplish national security goals.
Still, given the company’s ties to the Trump administration, Cathedral also faces risks from any changes in the administration and potential scrutiny over government contracts if Democrats were to take back control of the House or Senate after the November midterm elections.
(Reporting by David Jeans; editing by Chris Sanders and Deepa Babington)
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