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Four days before Donald Trump took office, the Financial Technology Startup Lamp announced a pitch for how to tackle wasteful government spending. In a 4,000-word blog post entitled “The Effective Formula,” Ramp’s CEO and one of its investors echoed ideas similar to those promoted by Trump and his billionaire Ally Elon Musk.
RAMP sells corporate credit cards and artificial intelligence software for businesses to analyze spending. And while the company does not appear to have an existing federal contract, the Post implied that the government should consider hiring it. Just as RAMP helps businesses manage their budgets, companies “can do the same with different government agencies,” according to blogs and company social media posts.
It didn’t take long for Lamp to be willing to find an audience. Within Trump’s first three months, its executives have won at least four individual meetings with the presidential appointee of the General Services Bureau. Several meetings were organized by top procurement officers of Josh Gruenbaum, commissioner of federal acquisition services.
The GSA is incorporating lamps to get a portion of the government’s $700 billion internal fee card program known as SmartPay. Over the past few weeks, GSA Trump appointees have been moving rapidly to tap Ramp for a charge card pilot program worth up to $25 million, sources told Propublica.
Founded six years ago, Lamp is supported by some of Silicon Valley’s most powerful figures. One is Peter Thiel, one of Trump’s earliest supporters in the tech world and a billionaire venture capitalist who spent millions on Vice President J.D. Vance’s support for the Ohio Senate. According to Pitchbook data, Thiel’s company Founders Fund has invested in seven separate funding for RAMP. Last year, Thiel said “no one is in a better position” to build products at the intersection of AI and finance.
The company has so far raised approximately $2 billion in venture capital, many of which are from companies with ties to Trump and Musk, according to startup tracking website CrunchBase. Other major financial aids at Lamp include Keith Rabois from Khosla Ventures. The prosperity of the capital was founded by Joshua Kushner, brother of Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner. 8VC, a company run by the Mask Alliance.
Gruenbaum paid special attention to flag-floating lamps inside and outside the institution. Scott Amy, general counsel for the bipartisan project on government oversight, said: He said career civil servants should lead the process to choose the best option for taxpayers.
A senior GSA official who requested anonymity for fear of retaliation said the high level of attention received was unusual, especially before the bid was made public. “You don’t want to give this impression that leadership has already decided the winner in some way.”
The GSA told Propublica “it refutes the proposal of unfair or preferential contract practices,” and the spokesman added, “Credit card reform initiatives are well known to the public for addressing waste, fraud and abuse.”
Lamp did not respond to requests for comment.
One of the earliest investors in the Lamp, Labois is part of an influential group of high-tech Titans known as the “Pay Pal Mafia.” The leaders of the Early Payments Company include influential players surrounding the Trump administration, including Musk and Thiel. According to media reports, Labois and her husband Jacob Helberg held a fundraiser that drew more than $1 million for Trump’s 2024 campaign. Trump has appointed Helberg as a senior role in the State Department.
Labour sits on the Lamp board of directors. He said he has no plans to join the Trump administration, and instead told CNBC: He told Propublica that his comments on CNBC were about large-scale policy ideas and “we are not involved in government-related initiatives.” Lamp “may be a great choice for a government that wants to improve its efficiency,” Laboa added.
Helberg said he was not involved in anything “lamp-related.”
Kushner’s company Thrive Capital did not respond to requests for comment. A spokesman for Tiel did not provide comment. 8VC did not respond to requests for comment, nor did the White House or Musk respond. Previously, Musk said “I will reject myself” if there is a conflict of interest issue.
Coming from private equity company KKR and having no government experience, the RAMP meeting with Gruenbaum came on track. GSA has decided whether to extend its SmartPay agreement by the end of the year, and preparations for the next generation program are underway. SmartPay is worth hundreds of millions of dollars in the costs of the financial institutions currently operating, US banks and Citibanks.
Gruenbaum and acting GSA administrator Stephen Ehikian joined the institution with the strong belief that SmartPay and other government payment programs are full of fraud and waste, causing huge losses.
But both GOP and Democrat budget experts and former GSA officials have explained that their views are uninformed. SmartPay, which provides visas and Mastercard charging cards to government employees, allows the federal workforce to purchase office supplies and equipment, book, and pay for gas.
The card usually funds the trip and is used to purchase up to $10,000.
“SmartPay is the lifeblood of the government,” said Sonny Hashmi, a former GSA committee member who oversaw the program. “This is a frequent program that solves real-world problems. It already burns into exceptional levels of surveillance and fraud prevention.”
Jessica Riedl, a GOP budget expert at the conservative Manhattan Institute think tank, said the notion that there was a major scam in charge card technology is a big deal. She criticized the waste from the government’s credit card program before the latest SmartPay system was implemented in 2018.
“This was a big problem about 20-25 years ago,” she said. “In the last 15 years, new control has been put into government credit card purchases.”
An audit of the 2017 program by the Government Accountability Office concluded that small SmartPay purchases “has little evidence of potential fraud,” but document errors were found. More recent government audits have found that staff members are not using combustion tools at all times.
The new leader of GSA is sure SmartPay is completely broken. In February, they placed a temporary $1 limit on government cards, severely limiting the number of cardholders, and suffocating funds on site workers.
Media reported that government-wide disruptions have occurred. Staff at the National Institutes of Health reportedly failed to purchase materials for the experiment, Federal Aviation Administration workers were unable to pay for a trip to the test system on-site, and National Park Service employees were unable to travel to oversee the road maintenance project.
At the time, the GSA issued a statement saying that restrictions were “risk mitigation best practices” and began moving internally to improve SmartPay.
$25 million opportunity
The first sip of RAMP’s SmartPay business could be delivered through a pilot program worth up to $25 million, announced by GSA a few weeks after GSA began meetings with the company.
At the tail end of the Biden administration, the GSA sent out a request for information (RFI) and wanted industry input on how to improve the next SmartPay iteration. However, some industry players who submitted their responses were those who said they had not received a response from the government. Instead, GSA began to meet RAMP.
GSA announced the new RFI for its pilot program on March 20, 2025, opening on days less than 7 business days.
John Weiler, co-founder of the non-profit research group The IT Acquisition Advisory Council, said that short windows like this seem unusual. “There’s nothing for a week. It gives the impression they’ve already chosen the winner,” said Weiler, who worked with Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley to investigate contractual issues.
The lamp is a clear cut “favorite” to ensure this work. One source within the GSA and another former staff member told Propublica. The winner has not been announced yet.
Procurement experts told Propublica that while it is a good practice to consult with industry leaders before a major overhaul, the fact-finding process must be guided and led by professional contractors.
A GSA spokesperson said, “All communications with multiple potential vendors are part of the market research to provide the best solution for US taxpayers.” The agency refused to answer questions about whether RAMP has already been selected internally for SmartPay work.
The pilot program is unique as it uses a special GSA purchasing agency known as the opening of commercial solutions. This process was used by the Pentagon and helped speed up the acquisition of products for fighter jets in the Armed Conflict Zone. Specification means that you can select the selected contractor faster without the same level of control.
It is not clear how Lamp originally secured a private meeting with the GSA leader. It is also not clear whether the Lamp will eventually take over the entire SmartPay agreement from Citibank and the US Bank. A spokesperson for US Bank and Citibank declined to comment.
It is clear that Lamp had no clients like the federal government. The only public sector partner listed on its webpage is the Charter Schools Network in Nashville, Tennessee.
Still, even before the RFI was made public, Lamp had begun to reach out to payment industry contacts asking about the special bank identification numbers needed to process government payments, industry sources said. Such measures were another indication that Lamp is preparing to tackle the program, two former GSA officials said.
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A meeting with the GSA will come as the RAMP meeting with the GSA is ready to play a more important role in spending decisions across the government. On the same day the SmartPay pilot was announced, Trump issued an executive order aimed at centralizing much of the government procurement within the GSA. The Doge initiative is effectively headquartered from an agency. Staff have installed beds and dressers to stay in the building overnight, and Musk’s right-hand man Steve Davis is a key adviser to the agency’s leadership.
Negotiations for SmartPay contracts have so far been flying under the radar. However, changes to credit card programs can further change the daily lives of federal employees and could fundamentally change the way agents operate. It also represents a huge business opportunity.
“There’s a lot of money that new companies coming here should make,” said Hashimi, a former GSA official. “But you have to ask: what is the problem being solved?”
Doris Burke contributed to his research.
