Former DOGE Leaders Launch Special With a16z Funding, Targeting AI Rollups in Senior Care
Updated
Updated · WIRED · Jun 5
Former DOGE Leaders Launch Special With a16z Funding, Targeting AI Rollups in Senior Care
2 articles · Updated · WIRED · Jun 5
Summary
Nate Cavanaugh and Justin Fox, who led DOGE efforts at several agencies, have launched holding company Special to bring “DOGE for the private sector,” starting with a senior-care unit called FigureHealth.
a16z led the funding round, joined by Coinbase founder Brian Armstrong, Palantir CTO Shyam Sankar and several former DOGE members tied to Elon Musk’s orbit.
Special says it will buy businesses in regulated, labor-intensive sectors and run them on an AI “operating system,” with construction and manufacturing also under review.
The pitch leans on DOGE-style claims of waste and fraud in taxpayer-funded services, a framing public-policy professor Don Moynihan called a narrow, “bro-y” view of government problems.
The launch extends DOGE alumni’s move into private ventures even as Cavanaugh and Fox remain linked to contested government actions, including the USIP takeover and an ongoing NLRB data-access investigation.