Shameful: Tech leaders react to ICE killing of Alex Pretti

Jan 27, 2026 - 09:00

A mourner cries at a makeshift memorial for ICE shooting victim Alex Pretti,

Social media is rarely as activated as it was this weekend — or as bipartisan in its outrage. Users from a wide swath of the political spectrum shared their horror at the killing of Alex Pretti, 37, an ICU nurse fatally shot on Saturday by a masked federal immigration officer in Minneapolis.

But in Silicon Valley, a divide began to grow. On one side were top tech CEOs who, as CNBC noted, failed to criticize an administration they've been cozy with since its inauguration. The most conspicuous silence was that of Apple's Tim Cook, who made a point of calling out the "senseless killing" of George Floyd at the WWDC conference in 2020. As his latest X post (celebrating MLK Day) filled with angry replies, Cook was to be found at the White House, attending a screening of the movie Melania.

But that wasn't the whole story. Just below the tier of superstar CEOs, some of the industry's leading technologists and investors (think: Google, Anthropic, OpenAI, a16z) took a stand on social media — including more than one who felt moved to post while declaring that they don't normally talk politics. Here's a representative list:

1. Jeff Dean, chief scientist, Google DeepMind & Google Research

2. Reid Hoffman, co-founder of LinkedIn

3. Yann LeCun, executive chairman at AMI Labs

4. Alexis Ohanian, investor and co-founder of Reddit

5. Meredith Whittaker, president of Signal app

6. James Dyett, senior executive at OpenAI

7. Paul Graham, co-founder of Y Combinator

8. Ethan Choi, partner at Khosla Ventures

9. Vinod Khosla, founder of Khosla Ventures

10. Chris Olah, co-founder of Anthropic

11. John O'Farrell, former general partner of a16z

12. Kath Korevec, director of product at Google Labs

13. Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic

14. Vineeta Agarwala, general partner at a16z

15. Ashley Mayer, co-founder and general partner of Coalition Operators

16. Katie Jacobs Stanton, founder and general partner of Moxxie Ventures

17. Dave McClure, founder of Practical Venture Capital

18. Seth Bannon, founding partner at Fifty Years

19. Josh Miller, CEO of The Browser Company