Rep.
Gerald Connolly, ranking member of the U.S.
House Oversight Committee, has initiated an examination into whether expense management startup Ramp is getting favoritism in its bid for a $25 million government contract.Connolly sent a letter to General Services Administration (GSA) Acting Administrator Stephen Ehikian demanding information and documents related to the GSAs reported strategies to award an agreement for a pilot program to Ramp.
News of the probe was initially reported by ProPublica.Among Connollys biggest concerns are that Ramp presumably has no federal contracting experience and its investors include a number of Trump allies and supporters.
Those financiers include Peter Thiels Founders Fund, Keith Rabois of Khosla Ventures, Thrive Capital (founded by Josh Kushner, bro of Trumps son-in-law Jared), vocal Trump supporter 8VCs Joe Lonsdale, and Jeb Bush, previous governor of Florida and bro of former Republican President George W.
Bush.
Rabois, according to Connollys letter, raised more than $1 million for Donald Trumps 2024 campaign.Connolly is asking for numerous things from the GSA, consisting of a breakdown of all meetingsbetween any GSA authorities and any Ramp representative, and all communications in between any GSA authorities, specialist, or subcontractor and any Ramp representative.The governments internal cost card program, called SmartPay, is a $700 billion program.
Presently, Citibank and US Bank, two of the countries biggest suppliers of credit cards, are the official banks of the current SmartPay contract.In April, Ramps head of communications, Lindsay McKinley, verified to A Technology NewsRoom that the startup was completing in a standard procurement process for a SmartPay pilot program based upon the strength of our solution.She claimed that the startup Ramp saw a public post on X shared by the Department of Government Efficiency, much better referred to as DOGE, on February 18 that said the US federal government presently has ~ 4.6 M active credit cards/accounts, which processed ~ 90M distinct deals for ~$40B of invest in FY24.A former client, Ramp claims, presented Ramp to GSA a few days later.However, Connolly alleges that Ramp supposedly started contacting entities in the payment market about special bank recognition numbers required to process government payments before a request for information (RFI) associated to the contract was publicly announced.He likewise claimed that a GSA worker just recently specified that Ramp was the favorite to win this business.Ramp did not have any comment on Connollys investigation.In March, Ramp doubled its assessment to $13 billion after a $150 million secondary share sale.
Considering that its creation in 2019, the startup has actually raised over $1 billion in equity financing and $700 million in committed debt funding.