Trump team has politically linked startups overhauled $700 billion in government payments

Four days before Donald Trump’s inauguration, fintech startup ramps issued recommendations on how to address wasteful government spending. In a 4,000-word blog post titled “Efficiency Formula,” RAMP’s CEO and one of its investors have similar ideas to Trump and his billionaire Ally Elon Musk: federal plans are flooded with fraud, and common-sense business technology can be solved quickly.

Ramp sells company credit cards and artificial intelligence software for businesses to analyze spending. Although the company does not appear to have an existing federal contract, the postal implies that the government should consider hiring it. Just as RAMP helps businesses manage their budgets, the company “can do the same for all kinds of government agencies,” according to blogs and company social media posts.

The ramp quickly found a willing audience. During Trump’s first three months of office, his executives held at least four private meetings in the presidential administration, which oversees major federal signings. Some of the conferences were organized by Josh Gruenbaum, a top U.S. procurement official and federal acquisition services specialist.

GSA is watching the ramp to get the government’s $700 billion internal fee card program, SmartPay. Sources told ProPublica that in recent weeks, GSA’s Trump-appointed individuals have been taking quick action to acquire a pilot program of up to $25 million in fee-cards.

Founded six years ago, Ramp is backed by some of the most powerful figures in Silicon Valley. One of them is Peter Thiel, one of Trump’s earliest supporters of the tech world, who spent millions of assistant vice president JD Vance to run for the Ohio Senate. According to PitchBook data, Thiel’s company Funders Fund has invested seven rounds of funding for RAMP. Thiel said at the intersection of AI and Finance, “there is no better place” to make the product.

To date, the company has raised about $2 billion in venture capital. Other major financial backers of RAMP include Keith Rabois of Khosla Ventures; Thrive Capital, founded by Joshua Kushner, brother of Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner; and 8vc, a company run by Musk’s allies.

Gruenbaum has paid special attention to the raised flags inside and outside the agency. “This goes against all normal contract safeguards to prevent the conferment of contracts based on people you know,” said Scott Amey, general counsel for the bipartisan government overseeing the program. He said professional civil servants should lead the process and choose the best option for taxpayers.

A senior GSA official who asked to be anonymous for fear of retribution said high levels of attention ramps were unusual, especially before the bid was made public. “You don’t want to give the impression that leadership has somehow decided the winner.”

GSA told ProPublica, “refuting any recommendations regarding unfair or priority contracting practices”, a spokesperson added, “The credit card reform initiative has been well known to the public to address waste, fraud and abuse.”

Ramp did not respond to a request for comment.

Rabois is one of the earliest investors in RAMP and is part of an influential tech giant group known as the “Paypal Mafia”. Leaders of early payment companies include several influential players around the Trump administration, including Musk and Thiel. According to media reports, Rabwis and his husband Jacob Helberg hosted a fundraiser that earned more than $1 million for Trump’s 2024 campaign. Trump has nominated Herberger to hold a senior position in the State Department.

Rabois sat on Ramp’s board. He said he did not plan to join the Trump administration, but told CNBC: “I have ideas and I can pour them to the right people.” He told ProPublica that his comments on CNBC were about large policy ideas and that he “had not been involved in any initiatives of companies related to the government.” Rabois added that the ramp “may be a good option for any government that wants to make it more efficient.”

Helberg said he “had no involvement in anything related to the ramp.”

Kushner’s company Thrive Capital did not respond to a request for comment. A Thiel spokesperson did not comment. 8VC did not respond to requests for comment, nor did the White House or Musk; in the past, if there was a conflict of interest, Musk had said, “I will recall myself.”

RAMP meeting with Gruenbaum (from private equity firm KKR, without government experience), it was a suitable time. GSA will decide at the end of the year whether to expand the SmartPay contract and prepare for the next generation of plans. SmartPay is worth hundreds of millions of dollars for financial institutions that currently operate the company, Bank of America and Citibank.

Sources in the GSA said Gruenbaum and proxy GSA administrator Stephen Ehikian strongly believe that SmartPay and other government payment plans are full of fraud or waste, causing huge losses, and sources in the GSA said the idea responded to the idea in a January memo for RAMP.

However, Republican and democratic budget experts, as well as former GSA officials, have described this view as unwise. SmartPay provides visas and Mastercard charge cards to government employees, enabling federal laborers to purchase office supplies and equipment, book travel and pay.

These cards are often used to fund travel, up to $10,000.

“SmartPay is the lifeblood of the government,” said Sonny Hashmi, former GSA commissioner for the program. “It’s a good plan to solve real-world problems…has baked with excellent oversight and fraud prevention.”

Jessica Riedl, a Republican budget expert with the conservative Manhattan Academy think tank, said the fraud of the fee-card technology is far-fetched. She criticized the waste in government credit card plans before implementing the latest SmartPay system in 2018.

“About 20-25 years ago, it was a huge problem,” she said. “In the past 15 years, there have been new controls on government credit card purchases.”

The 2017 review conducted by the Government Accountability Agency of the program concluded that despite documented errors, there was “very little evidence of potential fraud” in SmartPay’s small purchases. Recent government audits have found that some officials do not always use anti-fraud tools.

Sources say the new GSA leader firmly believes that SmartPay is completely broken, a view shared in a private meeting. In February, they limited the temporary limit on government cards by $1 and severely limited the number of cardholders, reducing funds to workers in the field.

News agencies reported that government chaos came with it: NIH staff reportedly couldn’t buy materials for the experiment, FAA workers were worried they wouldn’t be able to pay for travel to the field test system, and National Park Service staff could not go to oversee road maintenance programs.

At the time, the GSA issued a statement saying restrictions were “best practices for reducing risks” and began to improve SmartPay internally.

$25 million chance

RAMP’s first biting SmartPay business could be achieved through a pilot program of up to $25 million, GSA announced a few weeks after agency leadership began meeting with the company.

At the end of the Biden administration, the GSA has sent a request for information or RFI to seek industry advice on how to improve the next iteration of SmartPay. But some industry participants who submitted their answers said they did not hear echoes from the government. Instead, GSA began meeting Ramp.

GSA launched a new RFI for the pilot program on March 20, 2025, making it open for less than seven working days.

Such a short window seems unusual, said John Weiler, co-founder of the nonprofit research group. Weiler, who worked with Republican Senator Chuck Grassley to investigate the signing issue, said: “It’s nothing in a week, giving them the impression that they’ve selected the winner.”

A source inside the GSA told ProPublica that ramps are a clear “favorite” to ensure the work. The winner has not been announced yet.

Procurement experts tell ProPublica that consulting with industry leaders before overhaul is a good practice – but the fact-finding process must be led and led evenly by professional contractors.

A GSA spokesman said: “There are multiple suppliers in all communications with potential suppliers, which is part of market research to provide the best solution for U.S. taxpayers.” The agency declined to answer questions about whether the ramps that have already been selected for SmartPay work internally.

The pilot program is unique because it uses a special GSA procurement license called a commercial solution. The Pentagon has used this process to help speed up the acquisition of products for fighter jets in armed conflict zones. This name means that the selected contractor can be selected faster without the need for the same controls.

It is unclear how initial private meetings with GSA leaders ensured how private meetings were obtained. Whether the ramp will eventually take over the entire SmartPay contract between Citibank and Bank of America is unclear. A spokesperson for Bank of America and Citibank declined to comment.

Apparently, ramps never had a client like the federal government. The only public sector partner listed on its page is the Charter School Network in Nashville, Tennessee.

Nevertheless, even before the public announcement of RFI, RAMP began contacting contacts in the payments industry to ask for the special bank identification number needed to process government payments. Such steps are another sign that Ramp is ready to work in the program, two former GSA officials said.

As the agency is expected to play a more important role in decision-making across the government, the meeting between RAMP and GSA is here. The same day as the SmartPay pilot was announced, Trump issued an executive order trying to focus most government procurements within the GSA. Headquarters have effectively set up headquarters from agencies, staff have installed beds and dressing tables to spend the night in the building, and Musk’s right-hand Steve Davis is a key consultant to the agency’s leadership.

SmartPay contract negotiations have already been under the radar. But changes in credit card plans can further change the daily lives of federal employees and fundamentally change how agencies operate. It also represents a huge business opportunity.

“A new company comes here with a lot of money to make a lot of money,” said the former GSA official Hashmi. “But you have to ask: What is the problem that is being solved?”