David Sacks, a San Francisco tech investor and conservative podcaster, has landed a newly created job in President-elect Donald Trump’s White House.
Trump announced the choice of Sacks for “White House A.I. & Crypto Czar” in a post to Truth Social on Thursday, writing that the longtime investor would “focus on making America the clear global leader in both areas.” The role appears to be only an advisory gig; Sacks’ Craft Ventures told Bloomberg that he would remain at the venture capital firm.
“He will safeguard Free Speech online, and steer us away from Big Tech bias and censorship,” Trump wrote. “He will work on a legal framework so the Crypto industry has the clarity it has been asking for, and can thrive in the U.S.”
Like many of Trump’s picks, this one looks like a reimbursement. Sacks threw a swanky fundraiser for the then-candidate at his “Billionaires’ Row” Pacific Heights mansion in June, and his strident support on the popular “All-In Podcast” no doubt helped shift some of tech’s powerful single-issue cryptocurrency donors toward the former president.
Sacks is a crypto evangelist; his selection points to a regime under Trump that will benefit the scandal-ridden industry’s biggest firms and investors. Sacks is still deeply embedded in the industries he’ll apparently be helping regulate, including with his own artificial intelligence startup, Glue, and high-dollar investments through Craft.
Along with “All-In,” the ongoing tech- and economics-focused podcast, Sacks is known best for his early executive role at PayPal and his sale of social networking company Yammer to Microsoft for $1.2 billion in 2012. His investing history is littered with now-giant companies, including Airbnb, Facebook, Lyft, Slack, SpaceX and Reddit. On the other side of the spectrum is Done Global; Sacks was an early investor in the telemedicine startup, which saw top executives arrested this year over massive fraud charges.
In the political limelight at July’s Republican National Convention, Sacks received a “tepid” response from the crowd, Politico reported. He spent part of his speech bashing the city he lives in: “In my hometown of San Francisco, Democrat rule has turned the streets of our beautiful city into a cesspool of open encampments and open drug use.”
Sacks — making his first post on Truth Social — thanked Trump for the “czar” role on Thursday. He wrote, “I look forward to advancing American competitiveness in these critical technologies.”
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