Andreessen Horowitz co-founder Ben Horowitz has donated a fleet of Tesla Cybertrucks to the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police, the department has confirmed to TechCrunch.
The Cybertruck fleet is the latest entry in a list of gifts Horowitz has given to the Las Vegas police — a relationship TechCrunch revealed in detail late last year. The venture capitalist has donated more than $7 million to the department over the last few years.
Most of that money has been used to purchase technology from Andreessen Horowitz portfolio companies. At times, TechCrunch’s reporting showed, the police department offered Horowitz the chance to weigh in on how that technology was deployed.
Las Vegas Sheriff Kevin McMahill first announced the Cybertruck gift on February 25 at his annual “state of the department” address. He said during the speech that the trucks were provided by an anonymous donor and that they wouldn’t come out of the department’s budget. The Las Vegas Review-Journal was the first to report that Horowitz and his wife Felicia were behind the gift.
“We want these things because the cops inside will be safe no matter what. These stop bullets. They are also a tremendous recruitment tool for us,” McMahill said in his speech.
McMahill said on stage that the department would receive 10 Cybertrucks, although an unnamed department spokesperson told TechCrunch that Horowitz donated 11 of them. Horowitz did not respond to a request for comment.
Horowitz’s previous gifts to the Las Vegas police were made by donating funds to the department’s nonprofit police foundation — a method of funding that police accountability advocates say hurts transparency and competition. In this case, though, the department told the Las Vegas Review-Journal that the donation was not made to the police foundation. The department did not respond to TechCrunch’s question about how the donation was made.