Reid Hoffman speaks at a Tech Alliance event in Seattle in 2017. (GeekWire File Photo / Todd Bishop)
Reid Hoffman, the LinkedIn co-founder who has served on Microsoft’s board since 2017, will not stand for re-election at the company’s 2026 annual meeting, ending a board tenure that coincided with some of the most consequential years in the tech giant’s history.
Hoffman informed Microsoft on June 2 that he will not stand for re-election at its 2026 annual shareholder meeting, according to an SEC filing. He will remain a director until that meeting, later this year.
The filing states that Hoffman’s decision was not the result of any disagreement with management over the company’s operations, policies or practices. Microsoft thanked him for his contributions.
On an episode of his “Possible” podcast, released Friday morning, Hoffman told Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella that he wanted to return to “founder mode” to focus on Manas AI, the cancer drug-discovery startup he co-founded, citing early progress there.
Nadella thanked him for his board service and said he was eager to see what Hoffman builds next. “I am so grateful for all of your contributions to Microsoft and the board over the years, and excited to see you get back to founder mode with Manas,” Nadella wrote in a LinkedIn comment.
Hoffman joined the board after Microsoft’s $26.2 billion acquisition of LinkedIn, the professional network he co-founded in 2003. A longtime Greylock Partners investor and prominent Democratic donor, he served on the board’s Environmental, Social and Public Policy Committee.
His exit follows three consecutive years of opposition from the National Legal and Policy Center, a conservative shareholder group that urged investors to vote against his re-election, citing his political activities and other concerns. Shareholders re-elected him each time, most recently in December 2025.
Hoffman has been one of Silicon Valley’s most active figures in AI, both as an investor and a hands-on experimenter. He was an early investor in OpenAI and sat on its board until resigning in March 2023, citing potential conflicts with his AI investments at Greylock and his role as a founder of Inflection AI, the startup he co-founded in 2022 with DeepMind co-founder Mustafa Suleyman.
Microsoft hired Suleyman and most of Inflection’s staff in March 2024, installing Suleyman as CEO of a new Microsoft AI division, and struck a licensing deal with Inflection reportedly worth $650 million.
