White House AI and crypto czar David Sacks is changing his title and joining the President’s Council of Science and Technology Advisors as co-chair, he announced Thursday.
Sacks, who was named crypto and AI czar by US President Donald Trump before Trump took office last January, oversaw the White House’s early work on crypto initiatives, including passage of the stablecoin-focused GENIUS Act and, more recently, work around the Crypto Market Structure bill.
“PCAST is the leading body of external advisors charged with shaping science, technology, and innovation policy for the President and the White House,” he said in a post on X (formerly Twitter). “Thirteen of the world’s most accomplished leaders in science and technology will join us as initial members of PCAST.”
Sacks told Bloomberg on Thursday that his role as czar was designated as a “special government employee,” meaning he could only legally hold the position for 130 business days. Congressional Democrats had already raised concerns about missing this deadline last fall.
He doesn’t have the same problem as co-chair of the advisory committee.
Sacks said in the Bloomberg interview that the council would make policy recommendations and conduct studies on artificial intelligence, quantum computing, nuclear energy and other “cutting-edge technologies.”
“I think you can expect us to make recommendations in those areas. We want to advance the president’s AI framework that was already released last week,” Sacks said in the interview. “So, I think, you’ll see a lot of activity around that. But it will be in other areas as well.”
Sacks did not mention crypto in the interview.
Other committee members include Marc Andreessen, co-founder of Andreessen Horowitz, Sergey Brin, co-founder of Google, Michael Dell, founder of Dell, Fred Ehrsam, early backer of Coinbase, Jensen Huang, CEO of NVIDIA, Lisa Su, CEO of AMD, and Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Meta (formerly Facebook), among others. Michael Kratsios, who served in both Trump administrations, will serve as co-chair.
