David Sacks has concluded his tenure as Donald Trump’s AI and crypto czar. Speaking with Bloomberg on Thursday, the longtime entrepreneur, investor, and podcaster confirmed that his non-consecutive 130-day stint as a special government employee is over. He is moving on to co-chair the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology alongside senior White House technology adviser Michael Kratsios.
Sacks stated that as co-chair of the council, he can now make recommendations on an expanded range of technology topics beyond just artificial intelligence. In practice, this shift means Sacks will be much further from the power center in Washington than he was at the outset of this second Trump administration. As AI czar, he had a direct line to Trump and a hand in shaping policy. The council, however, is a federal advisory body that studies issues, produces reports, and sends recommendations up the chain but does not make policy itself.
Sacks noted to Bloomberg that this iteration of the council has the most star power of any such group ever assembled. The initial fifteen members include Nvidia’s Jensen Huang, Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, Oracle’s Larry Ellison, Google co-founder Sergey Brin, Marc Andreessen, AMD’s Lisa Su, and Michael Dell, among others.
Sacks told Bloomberg the council will take up AI, advanced semiconductors, quantum computing, and nuclear power. Near-term attention will go toward pushing Trump’s national AI framework, released just last week. The framework aims to replace what Sacks described as a mess of conflicting state-level rules, which create a difficult patchwork of regulation for innovators to navigate.
What Sacks did not address directly was why this transition is happening now and whether his recent public comments were a factor. Earlier this month, on the popular “All In” podcast he co-hosts, Sacks urged the administration to find an exit from the U.S.-backed war with Iran, outlining a set of worsening scenarios. Trump responded by telling reporters that Sacks had not spoken to him about the war. When asked about it by Bloomberg, Sacks stated he is not on the foreign policy or national security teams and that his podcast comments represented his personal view, not an official one.
For all the prominent names Sacks is bringing to the council, it is worth reflecting on what the body has historically been: an advisory group with real influence in some administrations and almost none in others. President Obama’s version was notably productive, issuing thirty-six reports over eight years, with two leading to concrete policy changes. President Trump’s first-term council, by contrast, took nearly three years to name its first members and made no particular mark. President Biden’s council was heavily academic and issued a modest number of reports.
The current council is a completely different entity, built almost entirely from the executive suites of the companies shaping the very technology it will advise on. Now, Sacks is one of them again and is likely free to resume his life as an investor and entrepreneur. Last year, TechCrunch reported on the ethics waivers Sacks obtained to maintain financial stakes in AI and crypto companies while shaping federal policy in those areas, an arrangement that drew sharp criticism from ethics experts and lawmakers.