Andreessen Horowitz’s decision to join Elon Musk’s offer for Twitter Inc. raises the prospect of a conflict for company co-founder Marc Andreessen, who also serves on the board of social-networking rival Meta Platforms Inc.

Andreessen Horowitz has committed to invest $400 million in the Twitter takeover, as part of $7.1 billion in new finance commitments disclosed on Thursday. This puts one of Facebook’s earliest sponsors, which changed its name to Meta last year, in a position to become the new owner of Twitter.

In a tweet, firm co-founder Ben Horowitz said Musk was maybe the only person in the world with the “courage, brilliance, and skills” to repair Twitter’s flaws and “build the public square that we all hoped for and deserve.”

The engagement of Andreessen Horowitz has sparked concerns regarding the VC firm’s ties to Meta, where Marc Andreessen has served as a board member since 2008. Though it is not uncommon for Silicon Valley investors to have a stake in competing startups, possible conflicts can be more serious with publicly traded companies, according to John Coates, a Harvard Law School professor.

“It’s safe to say that Silicon Valley norms about conflicts — where they are often tolerated or even encouraged, in a culture along the lines of ‘it all comes out in the wash’ — are dangerous to carry over to the world of public companies,” he said.

According to a spokeswoman for Andreessen Horowitz, the firm intends to seek legal counsel to ensure compliance with any restrictions governing the sharing of Twitter information with the firm.

Andreessen, 50, has been questioned in the past for alleged conflicts of interest at Meta, including investing in businesses that were later purchased by Facebook, such as Oculus VR. He was once sued by investors for counseling Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg on how to keep his majority voting control even if he sold his shares.

On Twitter, Andreessen has publicly backed Musk and criticized social media firms’ content-moderation rules. Musk has stated that if he is given control of Twitter, he intends to relax the regulations.

According to David Larcker, a professor at Stanford University, the investor’s connection to Meta may not be an issue because he does not sit on Twitter’s board. “Although I know of no way to figure this out from public data, I would guess that many executives and board members trade in the shares of their competitors,” he said.

Twitter, despite being significantly smaller than Facebook, is regarded as a Meta competitor, contending for digital advertising dollars and user posts. According to a person familiar with the situation, while Twitter’s board was debating whether to accept Musk’s offer, they considered the recent drop in Meta’s valuation. They eventually decided that the billionaire’s offer was reasonable.

Andreessen isn’t the only partner at his venture firm whose present ties may become more problematic as a result of Musk’s transaction. Vineeta Agarwala, an Andreessen Horowitz general partner who invests in biotech and medical firms, is married to Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal. It’s unknown whether Agrawal will continue as CEO of Twitter once Musk takes over, but Musk has previously stated that he made his offer for Twitter in part because he didn’t trust the company’s current leadership.

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