Who is David Sacks? Meet Trump’s new AI and crypto czar

US President-elect Donald Trump has picked his new head of artificial intelligence (AI) and crypto: David Sacks. 

Sacks will guide policy for Trump’s second term on both issues, which Trump described as “two areas critical to the future of American competitiveness,” on his social media platform, Truth Social. 

Among other things, Sacks will “safeguard free speech online” and steer the US away from “Big Tech bias and censorship,” Trump wrote. 

Sacks’ mandate will also include a legal framework for the US crypto industry so that it has the “clarity it has been asking for,” the president-elect added. 

The AI and crypto czar will also lead what Trump is calling the Presidential Council of Advisors for Science and Technology, a council that works with each administration to advise the President on science and technology. 

“[Sacks] has the knowledge, business experience, intelligence, and pragmatism to MAKE AMERICA GREAT in these two critical technologies,” Trump wrote.

Straight after finishing his law degree at the University of Chicago in 1998, Sacks worked as a management consultant for McKinsey & Company but left after a year to join e-commerce startup Confinity, along with Peter Thiel, an ally of Vice President-elect JD Vance. 

Sacks was the head of product at Confinity’s PayPal, where he built the company’s key teams before the company went public in the early 2000s.

The company was eventually bought by eBay for $1.5 billion, according to media reports at the time. 

Trump noted in his description of Sacks that he’s part of the “PayPal Mafia,” a group of early founders of the company that have gone on to grow some of the biggest tech ventures in Silicon Valley. 

Sacks moved on to a career in Hollywood after PayPal was acquired, by