Burning Man — the festival that eschews materialism, commodification, and capitalism — has paradoxically become associated with some of the wealthiest men on the planet.
In the early 2010s, news started to come out that tech’s billionaire class — the Google cofounders, Facebook cofounder Dustin Moskovitz, Uber cofounder Garrett Camp, and Tesla leader Elon Musk, among others — were regular attendees of the festival. They made headlines for their fancy RV camps and the Black Rock City airport for private planes.
But, in recent years, it seems many of the most notable billionaire Burners have ditched the festival. As of Friday afternoon, most of the usual suspects hadn’t been spotted or posted publicly about attending.
Their absences may not have anything to do with a shift in cultural cache or the less-than-desirable conditions that the festival has faced over the past few years — in 2023, Burning Man descended into flooded chaos, and this year, storms have caused the Black Rock City gates to close periodically.
“He’s been busy,” a spokesperson for venture capital billionaire Josh Kushner wrote when asked why he hasn’t been spotted on the Playa this year.
She pointed to Thrive Capital’s reported involvement in two active funding rounds, one for Databricks and another for OpenAI.
Not to mention that Kushner’s wife, supermodel and fellow Burner Karlie Kloss, is in her third trimester of pregnancy.
Other — and some may say greater — responsibilities may be a common thread explaining why certain diehard Burners have not yet shown their faces.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is a Burning Man convert and has said he attended the festival five or six times. But with a six-month-old baby at home — not to mention the ongoing AI talent wars — a trip to the desert may not be on his agenda.
Joe Gebbia is probably also busy. Last week, the Trump administration said the billionaire Airbnb cofounder would become the nation’s first-ever chief design officer.
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For others, the fact that they are now known as Burners — plus the advent of many of the technologies that they helped create — may have tarnished the event.
Google cofounders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, for example, attended the festival for decades. In 1998, the first-ever Google Doodle was an homage to Burning Man’s logo and served as an elaborate out-of-office memo. A few years later, the festival factored into their decision to hire Eric Schmidt as Google’s CEO.
But the notably private Page is now a household name and face, and thanks to camera phones and the internet on the Playa, images of Burning Man are projected all over the world. He has not been spotted at the festival for years. (Much less private Brin attended Burning Man as recently as 2023, though there is no news of him going this year. Schmidt declined to comment about his attendance, and Brin did not respond.)
Of course, it’s possible that some of these famous Burners have managed to attend incognito. Many take on an alias and don elaborate costumes in Black Rock City. It’s not all that hard to blend in with the tens of thousands of people in similar garb.
One person that doesn’t typically fly under the radar — at Burning Man or elsewhere — is Musk. The SpaceX chief has attended the festival since the early aughts. His brother, Kimbal Musk, was on Burning Man’s board as of 2023, according to the organization’s latest filings.
The prolific X user has not yet posted about going to Burning Man this year, though he has been very online about other things. If he does show up for the last days of this year’s festival, however, he may not want to visit some of Burning Man’s art pieces — such as this sculpture that seems designed to egg him on.