Trump names David Sacks as White House AI and crypto czar

He is also closely associated with Vice President-elect JD Vance, the investor-turned-Ohio senator.

Sacks is a venture capitalist and part of Silicon Valley’s “PayPal Mafia.” He first made his name in the technology industry during a stint as the chief operating officer of PayPal, the payments company whose founders in the late 1990s included billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk and investor Peter Thiel. After it was sold to eBay, Sacks turned to Hollywood, where he produced the 2005 satire Thank You for Smoking.

Back in Silicon Valley, he founded workplace communications company Yammer, which was bought by Microsoft Corp. in 2012 for $1.2 billion. He founded his own venture capital firm, Craft Ventures, in 2017 and has invested in Musk-owned businesses, including SpaceX.

Sacks said on a recent episode of his All-In podcast that a “key man” clause in the agreements of his venture firm’s legal documents would likely prevent him from taking a full-time position, but he might consider an advisory role in the new administration.

A Craft spokeswoman said Sacks would not be leaving Craft.

In his post, Trump said Sacks “will safeguard Free Speech online, and steer us away from Big Tech bias and censorship.”

Protecting free speech is a keen interest of Sacks. He regularly speaks about “woke” interests that try to muzzle unpopular opinions and positions.

Crypto Czar

The new post is expected to help spearhead the crypto industry deregulation Trump promised on the campaign trail. The role is expected to provide cryptocurrency advocates a direct line to the White House and serve as a liaison between Trump, Congress and the federal agencies that interface with digital assets, including the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.

Trump heavily campaigned on supporting crypto, after previously disparaging digital assets during his first White House term, saying their “value is highly volatile and based on thin air.”

The president-elect on Thursday said Sacks would “work on a legal framework so the Crypto industry has the clarity it has been asking for, and can thrive in the U.S.”

During the campaign, Trump spoke at a Bitcoin conference, accepted crypto campaign donations and met with executives from Bitcoin mining companies and crypto exchanges multiple times.

Trump’s desire to give priority to the digital asset industry is also reflected in his close allies and cabinet selections, including his Commerce secretary pick, Howard Lutnick, and Treasury secretary nominee Scott Bessent.

AI Tech

On the AI front, Sacks would help Trump put his imprint on an emerging technology whose popular use has exploded in recent years. Sacks is poised to be at the front lines in determining how the federal government both adopts AI and regulates its use as advances in the technology and adoption by consumers pose a wide array of benefits as well as risks touching on national security, privacy, jobs and other areas.

The president-elect has expressed both awe at the power of AI technology as well as concern over the potential harms from its use. During his first term, he signed executive orders that sought to maintain US leadership in the field and directed the federal government to prioritize AI in research and development spending.

As AI has become more mainstream in recent years and with Congress slow to act, President Joe Biden has sought to fill that void. Biden signed an executive order in 2023 that establishes security and privacy protections and requires developers to safety-test new models, casting the sweeping regulatory order as necessary to safeguard consumers.

A number of technology giants have also agreed to adopt a set of voluntary safeguards which call for them to test AI systems for discriminatory tendencies or security flaws and to share those results.

Trump has vowed to repeal Biden’s order. The Republican Party’s 2024 platform dismissed Biden’s executive order as one that “hinders AI Innovation, and imposes Radical Leftwing ideas on the development of this technology.”

Musk Ties

Sacks can be expected to work closely with Musk, the world’s richest person and one of the president-elect’s most prominent supporters. Musk is also a player in the AI space with his company xAI and a chatbot named Grok — efforts which pit him against Silicon Valley’s giants — and he stands to wield significant influence within the incoming administration.

The appointment won’t require Sacks to divest or publicly disclose his assets. Like Musk, Sacks will be a special government employee. He can serve a maximum of 130 days per year, with or without compensation.

However, conflict of interest rules apply to special government employees, meaning Sacks will have to recuse himself from matters that could impact his holdings.

Strong Opinions

Sacks’s Craft Ventures is known more for enterprise software investing than for crypto, but it has made a few crypto investments, including BitGo and Bitwise. Still, Sacks has firm opinions on the sector.

Speaking last month on All-In, Sacks praised a bill on crypto regulation that had passed in the US House but not the Senate earlier this year. The Financial Innovation and Technology for the 21st Century Act would regulate certain types of digital assets as a commodity, regulated by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.

“The crypto industry basically wants a really clear line for knowing when they’re a commodity and they want commodities to be governed, like all other commodities, by the CFTC,” he said on the November podcast. He also disparaged some of the Securities and Exchange Commission’s positions on crypto under its chair, Gary Gensler. “The days of Gensler terrifying crypto companies,” he said. “Those days are about to be over.”

Earlier this week, Trump nominated crypto advocate Paul Atkins to lead the SEC.