Mark Cuban Wants To Fill The Void Created By Musk’s Cuts

Billionaire business mogul Mark Cuban is aiming to clean up after the Department of Government Efficiency.

The longtime critic of Donald Trump is fielding business pitches from former and current federal staffers at the General Services Administration and White House to fill tech gaps that federal workforce layoffs have left, he told POLITICO.

He is effectively looking to back new companies that would sell back technology skills to the government that the U.S. Digital Service — and a small tech-focused department called 18F — offered before the offices were rocked by voluntary departures and mass terminations.

“I think it’s possible to out-Elon, Elon, because the people he will bring in don’t know what they don’t know,” the billionaire told POLITICO.

GSA’s 18F tech unit was charged with modernizing and building the government’s critical tech services like Login.gov, the central login system for Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security and other programs. And the USDS, housed in the White House, was responsible for streamlining processes for recruitment, digital service procurement and modernizing government sites.

These departments offered services government officials and Elon Musk previously said were worth growing. But in late February, 21 USDS staffers announced they would resign instead of helping Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, which had absorbed USDS. And on March 1, GSA dissolved 18F after administration and agency officials declared it “non-critical,” according to an internal memo.

In Cuban’s vision, his reformed tech company would be profitable, a philosophy that runs afoul the federal government’s ethos to offer public goods and services. It’s a view that’s not too far from Musk’s, which aims to run the government like a business.

It’s not entirely clear how this business would be profitable. Federal contracting companies are beholden to federal agencies that determine when the government can outsource and finance their help for a project, and top Trump administration and GSA officials have shown no indication they want to remake 18F and USDS. That’s partly because the 18F unit — which was supposed to be self-sustaining through fees it charges federal agencies for its services — has instead produced a “long-term shortfall of multi millions of dollars,” a GSA spokesperson said.

“The Trump administration is not interested in what Mark Cuban has to say,” said White House spokesperson Harrison Fields.

But the Cuban-backed projects may already be looking years — not months — into the future.

“Never once have we thought it could [go] federal before 2029,” said a GSA staffer who was granted anonymity to describe their team’s conversations with Cuban.

The type of firm Cuban is looking to fund, a former 18F staffer added, would likely have to squeeze profits from local and state contracts until a new administration with bigger and more-open pockets wants their services again.

Musk and GSA agency heads could further undercut Cuban’s plans if they use a familiar playbook to backfill servicing gaps with loyalists from Silicon Valley over former in-house talent. Musk has seeded his U.S. DOGE Service with confidants from his electric car company Tesla and space exploration company SpaceX. And GSA’s upper rungs are filled with Musk acolytes like administrator Stephen Ehikian, a former Salesforce vice president, and Thomas Shedd, a former Tesla software engineer who leads the agency’s tech arm.

“The biggest thing Trump-land values is loyalty. So they will go to that well for technologists,” the GSA staffer said.

Cuban doesn’t see this as a challenge. “If we can leverage the expertise and eliminate all the extra steps and the friction that had always been there, because that’s how government works, we can be the go-to for fixing the problems they created,” he said.

“It depends on the path,” the billionaire added. “In order for it to work, they would have to generate revenue [from] the private sector as well.”

“What I have tried to stress to several who I think have a chance, and may invest in, is that you have to look at this from an Elon point of view,” Cuban continued.

Once agencies realize the impact of these cuts, he speculated, they may look to claw back lost essential services using cheap contractors, “which means that the expertise and experience 18F alum have needs to be used to be able to be the low cost, high knowledge solution. That is where I think these [newcomers] can thrive.” He did not elaborate on how the company would do this and when it would get off the ground.

A GSA spokesperson did not comment specifically on the agency’s interest in Cuban’s plans. White House DOGE advisor Katie Miller did not respond to a request for comment.

The plans come as DOGE moves through the federal government workforce and contracts to trim spending. The efforts have abruptly terminated tens of thousands of federal employees and prompted private companies that lost contracts to eliminate scores of workers. DOGE and agencies including GSA have signaled that even larger waves of headcount and contract cuts could come soon.

These business pitches mark significant progress toward an idea the “Shark Tank” investing star threw out on March 1, when GSA dissolved 18F. “If you worked for 18F and got fired, Group together to start a consulting company,” he wrote on social media website Bluesky. “It’s just a matter of time before DOGE needs you to fix the mess they inevitably create. They will have to hire your company as a contractor to fix it. But on your terms.”

“I’m happy to help,” he concluded.

Cuban’s latest undertaking adds to a yearslong spat with Musk. Last year, Cuban rallied for former Vice President Kamala Harris, who he said would serve small businesses and the overall economy more effectively than Trump.

If Cuban wants to pull off his latest business idea, he has to contend with a reticence among some current and former GSA staffers to help a private company generate a profit off of building public services like notify.gov, a GSA project that agencies use to send texts about government benefits to the public.

“Does allowing the government to text constituents need to turn a profit for an outside vendor?” the GSA staffer asked. “I would argue it does not.”

A former 18F staffer with knowledge about the conversations with Cuban demurred, “I don’t see this type of thing making the money someone like Cuban would want, without turning it into a consultancy many of us wouldn’t want to work for.”

Cuban chastised some of them for failing to be “entrepreneurial at all. … They just want to move groups into a new organization that guarantees them salaries for several years without a real path to profitability.”

“A couple have a real chance to turn into small companies that can leverage their expertise,” Cuban continued.

For their part, some former 18F technologists are looking into “partnerships with existing organizations, other sources of public benefit funding” to pursue working arrangements that aren’t profit-driven, said a person familiar with the matter.

But at its core, everyone’s goals appear to align. Cuban said of the staffers he’s chatted with, ”they are hoping what they are creating will fill a void left by the firing of so many people.”