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Rep. Gerald Connolly , ranking member of the U.S. House Oversight Committee , has initiated an probe into whether disbursal management startup Ramp is receive discriminatory treatment in its bid fora $ 25 million government declaration .
Connolly sent aletterto General Services Administration ( GSA ) Acting Administrator Stephen Ehikian demanding info and documents link up to the GSA’sreported plansto award a declaration for a pilot political platform to Ramp . News of the investigation was first account byProPublica .
Among Connolly ’s biggest concerns are that Ramp allegedly has “ zero federal catching experience ” and its investor admit a number of Trump ally and supporters . Those investor include Peter Thiel ’s Founders Fund , Keith Rabois of Khosla Ventures , Thrive Capital ( founded by Josh Kushner , brother of Trump ’s Logos - in - law Jared ) , outspoken Trump supporter8VC ’s Joe Lonsdale , and Jeb Bush , former governor of Florida and brother of former Republican President George W. Bush . Rabois , according to Connolly ’s missive , call down more than $ 1 million for Donald Trump ’s 2024 political campaign .
Connolly is requesting several thing from the GSA , including a detailed lean of all merging between any GSA official and any Ramp congresswoman , and all communications between any GSA functionary , declarer , or subcontractor and any Ramp congressman .
The government ’s inner expense card programme , dub SmartPay , is a $ 700 billion program . Currently , Citibank and US Bank , two of the nation ’s largest suppliers of deferred payment cards , are the official bank building of the currentSmartPay declaration .
In April , Ramp ’s head of communication theory , Lindsay McKinley , confirmed to TechCrunch that the inauguration was “ competing in a received procurement cognitive process for a SmartPay pilot light program based on the strength of our solution . ”
She take that the startup Ramp sawa public post on Xshared by the Department of Government Efficiency , comfortably known as DOGE , on February 18 that allege “ the US government activity currently has ~4.6 M active citation cards / explanation , which processed ~90 MB unique transactions for ~$40B of spend in FY24 . ”
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A former customer , Ramp claims , introduced Ramp to GSA a few days afterwards .
However , Connolly alleges that Ramp reportedly began contacting entities in the payment industry about exceptional savings bank identification numbers required to work government activity payment before a request for information ( RFI ) related to the contract was publically announced .
He also claimed that a GSA employee recently stated that Ramp was the “ favourite ” to win this business .
Ramp did not have any remark on Connolly ’s investigation .
In March , Rampdoubled its valuationto $ 13 billion after a $ 150 million secondary share sales event . Since its inception in 2019 , the startup has raised over $ 1 billion in equity financing and $ 700 million in committed debt funding .
