Citrix Parent CSG CEO Helping Elon Musk’s DOGE At Treasury Department

Cloud Software Group CEO and former Broadcom top executive Tom Krause reportedly is working with Elon Musk’s Department Of Government Efficiency in reviewing the U.S. Treasury Department’s payment systems.

Tom Krause—the current CEO of Citrix and several other tech companies’ parent company Cloud Software Group—is reportedly helping Elon Musk’s Department Of Government Efficiency (DOGE) with reviewing the nation’s federal payment system.

Krause, a longtime top IT executive and former CFO of Broadcom, played a critical role in Broadcom’s $61billion acquisition of VMware and was even initially slated to become the leader of VMware post-merger.

However, in 2022, Krause abruptly departed Broadcom to become CEO of Cloud Software Group (CSG) which owns Citrix, Tibco, Spotfire, Jaspersoft and other IT companies.

Multiple news outlets are reporting that Krause is now helping the U.S. Treasury Department and serves as a liaison to Elon Musk’s DOGE.

President Donald Trump’s administration has approved plans to grant Treasury officials affiliated with Musk’s DOGE team access to the federal system that handles trillions in payments.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has signed off on a plan to give access to the payment system to a team led by Krause, according to multiple reports.

Bessent granted DOGE access to the Treasury’s payment system Friday that included DOGE representative Krause, according to a report by The New York Times.

Krause’s role will be subject to safeguards that would not allow the ability to make changes to the system and that no one outside the Treasury Department would have access. “The secretary’s approval was contingent on it being essentially a read-only operation,” said sources familiar with the matter, according to a Politico report.

Fort Lauderdale, Fla.-based CSG did not respond to comment on the matter by press time.

In January, CSG confirmed the vendor conducted layoffs worldwide, with LinkedIn posts from former workers revealing cuts of engineers, technical account managers and other roles.

Krause’s Broadcom-VMware Merger Role

In 2022, Krause was named CEO of Cloud Software Group, which has said more than 100 million users around the globe rely on the company to help them adapt and transform to meet the tech challenges across private, public, managed and sovereign cloud environments.

Prior to CSG, Krause spent over six years at Broadcom, where he played a critical role in Broadcom’s acquisition of VMware.

As president of Broadcom’s Software Group, Krause spoken at length with investors, analysts and VMware employees about the benefits of the deal throughout 2022 and 2023. Krause even carried out a town hall with VMware employees alongside Broadcom CEO Hock Tan, while also writing several blogs regarding the benefits of the merger.

The initial plan for VMware, post-acquisition, was for the company to become part of Broadcom’s Software Group under Krause’s leadership. Instead, it was decided to rebrand Broadcom Software Group as VMware.

“VMware is an iconic software company with a vibrant ecosystem, including hyperscalers, system integrators and channel partners,” Krause said in 2022. “We don’t want to change any of that, and in fact, we want to embrace those relationships. We have tremendous respect for what VMware has built, supported by a skilled team of engineering talent. It is for all these reasons and more that we’ve committed to rebrand Broadcom Software Group as VMware.”

Broadcom completed its acquisition of VMWare in late 2023.

Musk On Treasury Officials

DOGE was created by the Trump administration to slash government staff and spending. DOGE, for its part, said its mission is to modernize "federal technology and software to maximize governmental efficiency and productivity."

“Career Treasury officials are breaking the law every hour of every day by approving payments that are fraudulent or do not match the funding laws passed by Congress,” Musk recently wrote on his social media company X. “This needs to stop NOW!”

He said his DOGE team discovered “that payment approval officers at Treasury were instructed always to approve payments, even to known fraudulent or terrorist groups. They literally never denied a payment in their entire career. Not even once.”

President Trump this weekend commended Musk’s recent work on DOGE.

“Elon is doing a good job. He’s a big cost-cutter,” said Trump in an interview with reporters this weekend. “He’s very much into cutting the budget of our federal government.”

Krause’s Technology Career

Krause was vice president of corporate development at Avago Technologies in 2016.

When Avago Technologies and Broadcom merged, he soon became CFO of the newly formed Broadcom Inc. As CFO of Broadcom, he was responsible for all financial functions, mergers and acquisitions, human resources and investor relations.

In 2020, he was promoted to lead Broadcom’s six software divisions as president of Broadcom’s Software Group, which he helped form. Krause was responsible for all of Broadcom’s software divisions as well as software sales, customer support and software operations. He worked with a team of more than 6,000 employees and managed over $5 billion in revenue.

Prior to Avago and Broadcom, Krause ran his own financial advisory firm—Krause Consulting Group—for two years where he represented several public and private technology companies.

His IT career also includes a six-year stint at Techwell as vice president of business development; two years at venture capital firm Technology Crossover Ventures; and two years working as an investment banking analyst at wealth management firm Robert Stephens.