David Sacks Leaves AI Czar Role, Unveils Next Move

David Sacks’ tenure as Donald Trump’s AI and crypto czar has come to an end.

In an interview with Bloomberg on Thursday, the longtime entrepreneur, investor and podcaster confirmed that his 130‑day, non‑consecutive role as a special government employee is over. He is now moving to co‑chair the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) alongside senior White House technology adviser Michael Kratsios.

“Going forward as co‑chair of PCAST, I can offer recommendations not just on AI but on a wider range of technology topics,” he told Bloomberg in a video interview. “So yes, this is how I’ll be contributing from now on.”

In practice, this means Sacks will be much farther from Washington’s power center than at any point since the start of the second Trump administration. As AI czar, he had a direct line to Trump and helped shape policy. PCAST is a federal advisory body—it examines issues, produces reports and sends recommendations up the chain, but it does not set policy.

The council has existed in some form since FDR, but Sacks noted to Bloomberg that this particular iteration has “the most star power of any group like this” ever assembled, and it’s hard to argue with him. The initial 15 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. (That’s a lot of billionaires.)

Sacks told Bloomberg the council will take on AI, advanced semiconductors, quantum computing and nuclear power, with near‑term focus on advancing Trump’s national AI framework, released just last week. The framework is designed to replace what Sacks described as a messy tangle of conflicting state‑level rules. “You’ve got 50 different states regulating this in 50 different ways,” he said, “and it’s creating a patchwork of regulation that’s difficult for our innovators to comply with.”

What Sacks did not directly address was why the transition is happening now and whether his recent comments played a role. Earlier this month, on the popular “All In” podcast he co‑hosts, Sacks publicly urged the administration to find an exit from the U.S.‑backed war with Iran, walking through a series of worsening scenarios—attacks on oil infrastructure in neighboring countries, destruction of desalination plants and the possibility of nuclear use by Israel—and calling for a diplomatic way out. Trump responded by telling reporters that Sacks hadn’t spoken to him about the war. (The U.S.‑Israel war on Iran has now been going on for approximately 27 days.)

Asked about the podcast episode by Bloomberg on Thursday, Sacks essentially threw up his hands: “I’m not on the foreign policy team or the national security team,” he said, adding that his podcast comments represented his personal view, not an official one.

For all the marquee names Sacks is bringing to PCAST, it’s worth remembering what the council has historically been: an advisory body that wielded influence in some administrations and almost none in others.

President Obama’s version was arguably the most productive on record, producing 36 reports over eight years—two of which led to concrete policy changes, including an FDA rule that opened the market for over‑the‑counter hearing aids.

President Trump’s first‑term council, by contrast, took nearly three years just to name its first members, issued only a handful of reports and made little impact. President Biden’s council leaned heavily academic—with Nobel laureates, MacArthur fellows and National Academy members—and released a modest number of reports before the administration ended.

The current PCAST is a completely different animal, built almost entirely from the executive suites of the companies shaping the technology it will advise on.

Now, Sacks is once again one of those unencumbered executives, free to return to his life as an investor and entrepreneur. A spokesperson for Craft Ventures, the firm Sacks co‑founded and where he remains a partner, has not yet responded to related questions about next steps. TechCrunch reported last year on the ethics waivers Sacks obtained to maintain financial stakes in AI and crypto companies while shaping federal policy in both areas—an arrangement that drew sharp criticism from ethics experts and lawmakers.