Zenefits CEO David Sacks speaks at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference in San Francisco, Calif.
Paul Kin | San Francisco Chronicle | Hearst Newspapers via Getty Images
Venture capitalist and podcaster David Sacks joins Trump administration as President-elect Donald Trump's “White House AI & Crypto Czar” name Thursday on Truth Social.
Bags will guide the administration's policies for artificial intelligence and cryptocurrency, Trump wrote. Some of that work includes creating a legal framework for crypto, as well as directing a president's council of advisers on science and technology.
“David will focus on making America the clear world leader in both areas,” Trump wrote. “He will protect Free Speech online, and lead us away from Big Tech bias and censorship.”
The post marks the second Trump administration to reward Silicon Valley figures who supported his campaign. It also indicates that the administration will push for policies that cryptocurrency entrepreneurs generally support.
Bags became a major Trump promotion earlier this year, hosting a fundraiser for the then-Republican candidate at his San Francisco mansion. Tickets sold for $50,000 each, with a $300,000 row that included perks like a photo with Trump.
It was a big change in tone for Sacks, who had been a vocal critic of Trump after the Capitol riots on Jan. 6, 2021. Sacks said in an episode of his “All-In” podcast shortly afterward that Trump was “to clear” responsible for the events of January 6, and that he had “disqualified himself from being a candidate at the national level.”
In July, Sack spoke at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee.
Sacks is a venture capitalist and entrepreneur who sold Yammer to Microsoft for $1.2 billion in 2012. He is also affiliated with the “PayPal mafia,” an unofficial club of tech luminaries and investors. , among them Elon Musk and Peter Thiel, who worked at PayPal in the 1990s.
In recent years, Sacks has been known for hosting the “All-In” podcast with fellow investors Chamath Palihapitiya, Jason Calacanis, and David Friedberg. In his post, Trump called it “the premier podcast in Tech, where he and his friends discuss economic, political and social issues.”
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