Burning Man without billionaires: Are tech founders letting the cult rave down?

Burning Man was once considered a dream destination for tech billionaires – but many of the most famous faces are now staying away from the festival.

Burning Man – the festival that rejects materialism, commercialism and capitalism – is paradoxically associated with some of the richest men in the world.

In the early 2010s, it became known that the tech industry's billionaire class—including Google co-founders, Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz, Uber co-founder Garrett Camp, and Tesla CEO Elon Musk—regularly attended the festival. Their luxurious RV camps and Black Rock City airport for private jets made headlines.

In recent years, however, many of the most famous billionaires seem to have turned their backs on the festival. As of Friday afternoon, most of the usual suspects had neither been spotted nor publicly announced their participation.

Their absence may have less to do with dwindling cultural appeal or adverse conditions—in 2023, Burning Man was engulfed in the chaos of flooding, and this year storms temporarily closed its gates—than with other commitments.

"He's very busy," explained a spokeswoman for venture capital billionaire Josh Kushner when asked why he wasn't at the Playa this year. She cited Thrive Capital's participation in two ongoing funding rounds—one for Databricks, one for OpenAI. In addition, Kushner's wife, supermodel and fellow Burner Karlie Kloss, is in her third trimester of pregnancy.

Other prominent Burners also apparently have larger commitments. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, an avowed Burning Man fan who attends five or six times, currently has a six-month-old baby at home—not to mention the ongoing battles for AI talent. The same applies to Airbnb co-founder Joe Gebbia: He is set to join the Trump administration as the first Chief Design Officer and is likely to be quite busy.

For some tech giants, their own prominence also seems to have transformed the festival. Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, for example, were regular guests for decades. In 1998, the first Google Doodle adorned the Burning Man logo, and a few years later, the festival even played a role in the decision to appoint Eric Schmidt as CEO. But Page, now an internationally known face, hasn't been seen on the beach for years—in part because smartphones and the internet now carry every scene out into the world. Brin, on the other hand, is still scheduled to attend Burning Man in 2023, but his attendance for that year also remained unconfirmed. Schmidt declined to comment, and Brin didn't respond.

Of course, it's possible that some of the super-rich still participate incognito. Many adopt aliases and disappear into Black Rock City in elaborate costumes—not a particularly difficult task among tens of thousands of similarly disguised people.

One person, however, rarely flies under the radar—neither on the beach nor anywhere else: Elon Musk. The SpaceX CEO has been attending the festival since the early 1980s. According to the organization's records, his brother, Kimbal Musk, served on Burning Man's board until 2023. Musk himself hasn't posted about attending this year—although he's otherwise extremely active online. Should he appear in the final days of the festival, however, he might want to steer clear of some of the artwork—such as a sculpture apparently erected in his honor.