--- alias: - Auren Ability Hoffman born: 1970-09-05 category: Technologists created: 2026-06-17 location: United States summary: Auren Hoffman is an American technology entrepreneur who cofounded the secret society Dialog with Peter Thiel in 2006 and founded the location-data broker SafeGraph and the identity-resolution firm LiveRamp, placing him at the intersection of the Thiel elite-network and the consumer-data-brokerage industry. tags: - Person - AurenHoffman - Dialog - SafeGraph - LiveRamp - SiliconValley - Surveillance updated: 2026-06-17 --- Auren Hoffman is an American technology entrepreneur and the cofounder, with [Peter Thiel](/people/peter-thiel/), of the secret society [Dialog](/organizations/dialog/), and the founder of the location-data brokerage [SafeGraph](/organizations/safegraph/) and the identity-resolution firm LiveRamp. His career has placed him at the center of two converging networks: the Thiel elite-gathering and venture network (through Dialog and Summit Series-adjacent social circles), and the consumer-data-brokerage industry (through LiveRamp and SafeGraph). The 2026 leak of Dialog's membership roster identified Hoffman as Dialog's chairman and the data entrepreneur whose firms have repeatedly drawn scrutiny for the sale of granular consumer location and identity data to corporate and government clients.[^1] Hoffman holds the two roles simultaneously: he runs the off-the-record network in which government principals meet technology and finance principals, and he runs the firms that supply consumer-behavior data to government agencies. The convening network determines who talks to whom; the data network determines what is known about the population those conversations govern. The two are held by the same individual. ### Dialog Chairmanship Dialog was cofounded by Thiel and Hoffman in 2006 as an invitation-only retreat convening U.S. officials, foreign government figures, and Silicon Valley executives under off-the-record rules. Hoffman serves as the organization's chairman. The 2026 *WIRED* report, based on the leak published by the hacktivist [crimew](/people/maia-arson-crimew/) and a separately provided registration list, identified Hoffman as the operational principal of Dialog alongside Thiel as the financial and reputational principal. Hoffman appears on the 222-name 2026 retreat roster.[^1] The division of labor between Thiel and Hoffman at Dialog tracks their comparative advantages. Thiel supplies the reputational gravity that draws the [PayPal Mafia](/organizations/paypal-mafia/) core, the [Palantir Technologies](/organizations/palantir-technologies/) government client base, and the ideological principals of the [Neoreaction](/concepts/neoreaction/) orbit; Hoffman supplies the convening craft, the data-industry network, and the operational discipline to run a recurring institution. The two-decade persistence of Dialog without a public leak until 2026 reflects the operational seriousness of the arrangement, and the chairman role indicates that the day-to-day institution is Hoffman's rather than Thiel's.[^1] ### LiveRamp and Identity Resolution Hoffman founded LiveRamp (originally as RapLeaf) as a data-onboarding and identity-resolution company, building systems to match offline customer data to online identifiers across advertising and marketing ecosystems. LiveRamp was acquired by the advertising-technology holding company Acxiom in 2014 for approximately 310 million dollars, and was later spun out as an independent public company, Ramp Holdings, trading on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker RAMP. The core technical product, identity resolution across disparate data sets, is the same operational problem that underlies both commercial marketing and state surveillance.[^2] The identity-resolution problem is the joining-key problem: given a name and address in one database, a cookie in another, a device advertising ID in a third, and a loyalty-card number in a fourth, determine that all four refer to the same person. Commercially, the solution lets an advertiser track a single consumer across web, mobile, and in-store behavior. The same technique, applied to telecommunications, financial, and location data, lets a state or its contractor track a single person across the same surfaces. LiveRamp's commercial product and the intelligence-application of the same architecture are technically identical, though LiveRamp's clients were commercial.[^2] ### SafeGraph and Location Data Hoffman founded SafeGraph in 2014 as a location-data brokerage, aggregating and reselling anonymized mobile-device location pings collected from smartphone applications. SafeGraph's datasets have been used in academic research, real estate, and advertising, and the company has repeatedly drawn scrutiny over the granularity of its data and its accessibility to government clients. In 2020 the U.S. CDC contracted with SafeGraph for cell-phone location data to monitor compliance with COVID-19 pandemic movement restrictions, a use that surfaced the extent to which commercially collected location data is available to federal agencies without a warrant.[^1][^3] The CDC contract made publicly visible what had been an open secret in the industry: commercially collected location data is at least as granular and as current as anything the intelligence community collects under legal process, and it is available for purchase without a warrant because the data is "volunteered" by the user through app permissions. The 2026 Dialog leak renewed scrutiny of Hoffman's position at the intersection of elite-network convening and the commercial surveillance-data industry, because the same individual chairing the off-the-record gathering of senators, governors, and military commanders also chairs the firm that sold the location data to the CDC.[^1] Hoffman's combined roles produce a data-broker-to-regulator pathway. The same firm (SafeGraph) that sells consumer location data commercially also sells it to federal public-health and law-enforcement agencies, while its founder chairs a private gathering (Dialog) whose membership includes sitting U.S. senators, governors, military commanders, and technology executives. The convening network (who talks to whom, off the record) and the data network (who knows what about the population) are run by the same individual, and the Dialog chairmanship is where the two networks overlap in person.[^1] ### Earlier Ventures Prior to LiveRamp and SafeGraph, Hoffman founded Bridgepath, an early online recruiting service that operated in the late-1990s web-services market. Bridgepath was part of the first wave of internet-era recruiting platforms that attempted to apply database-matching to the job-search function, the same identity-resolution-and-matching architecture that would subsequently underlie both LiveRamp and SafeGraph. Hoffman's experience with the data-matching problem at Bridgepath preceded his founding of the identity-resolution firms by approximately a decade.[^2] Hoffman ran the technology strategy and research firm Stonebrick in the period between Bridgepath and LiveRamp. The Stonebrick work involved advising technology firms on growth strategy and market positioning, and the client relationships Hoffman built during this period formed the basis of the investor-and-founder network he would subsequently bring to the Dialog convening. Hoffman's *Summation* blog (later Substack newsletter) and his podcast output on technology and elite-network topics established his public profile as a convening figure before Dialog was founded.[^2] Hoffman is a recurring figure in the Summit Series-adjacent founder-and-investor social circuit. The Summit Series (now Summit) hosts the annual Summit at Sea and the Summit Powder Mountain gatherings, and its audience overlaps substantially with the Dialog invitation list. Hoffman's positioning in the Silicon Valley founder-and-investor network, distinct from but overlapping with the PayPal Mafia core around Thiel, predates Dialog and supplied the peer network the gathering was built on.[^2] [^1]: Cameron, Dell, and Yulia Almazova. "Leak Exposes Members of Peter Thiel's Secretive 'Dialog' Society." *WIRED,* June 16, 2026. https://www.wired.com/story/leak-exposes-members-of-peter-thiels-secretive-dialog-society/ [^2]: For LiveRamp and Ramp Holdings corporate history, see Ramp Holdings SEC EDGAR filings and the Acxiom 2014 acquisition record. [^3]: For the CDC contract with SafeGraph in 2020, see contemporaneous reporting on federal procurement of commercial location data, including coverage in *The Wall Street Journal* and *Vice Motherboard* in 2020.