News Analysis
The incoming White House AI and crypto czar is a Silicon Valley success story who may use his experiences in technology, investing and business to push the U.S. AI market forward.
U.S. President-Elect Donald Trump last week appointed David Sacks of San Francisco to the role, calling him an “extremely successful entrepreneur and investor" in a post on Truth Social. Sacks will guide the administration's policy on AI and cryptocurrency, which are “critical to American competitiveness,” Trump says. Sacks will focus on making America a “global leader” in both sectors and lead the Presidential Council of Advisors for Science and Technology.
Sacks says he is “honored and grateful for the trust you have placed in me” in a post on X replying to Trump.
Here, we detail Sacks’ career to gain insight into his background and how he may shape the U.S. AI market as the country’s AI czar.
David Sacks and AI
- Investing in AI as a Silicon Valley Venture Capitalist
- Disrupting Markets as a Founder and Leader of Unicorn Companies
- Branching Into Entertainment as a Feature Film Producer
- Creating a Public Platform as an Active Blogger and Podcaster
- His Education is in Economics and Law
Investing in AI as a Silicon Valley Venture Capitalist
Sacks is a co-founder and partner of the venture capital firm Craft Ventures. The San Francisco-based firm, founded in 2007, is focused on B2B software investing.
The firm says it has proven and “repeated” success in building and scaling software-as-a-service (SaaS) companies. Craft knows “what it takes” to build “unicorn” companies or companies valued at over $1 billion, as members of its team have built unicorns.
Craft Ventures's investment portfolio includes various category creators and industry disruptors in AI as well as other markets: such as Airbnb; Eventbrite; Lyft; Meta; Neuralink; Palantir; Reddit; Slack; SpaceX; The Boring Company; Uber; X; and xAI.
Sacks is also a board member or observer of several of the firm’s portfolio companies, such as Roboflow, SentiLink and Vendr.
Craft raised $1.32 billion for two of its funds last November, when it reported $3.3 billion in assets under management, according to a blog post by Sacks.
As a long-time software venture capitalist at Craft, Sacks’ mindset and outlook on technology should give him a supportive view of the software-driven AI market. His expertise in identifying and valuing tech innovation that can create categories or disrupt markets should help him enable AI innovations that can eventually affect and change every industry and role.
Sacks’ analyst-level understanding of the commercial, economic and political forces that impact the innovation and growth of technology markets should aid his assessments and counsel on growing the AI market. By working in tech across multiple industries and helping launch AI companies, he operates in the AI ecosystem and should be positioned to connect people, organizations and resources to grow AI.
“Sacks understands the critical role of funding in fostering innovation,” said Robin Patra, head of data, platform, product and engineering at ARCO Construction. “He may advocate for incentives to attract venture capital to AI startups, ensuring a steady pipeline of groundbreaking ideas.”
Patra said Sacks could “champion sector-specific AI applications,” such as autonomous vehicles in transportation.
Related Article: OpenAI Closes $6.6B Funding Round
Disrupting Markets as a Founder and Leader of Unicorn Companies
Sacks’ career in tech started in 1999 with the startup Confinity, which was later named PayPal. A member of the PayPal “mafia,” Sacks served as COO and head of product. Sacks “built and ran” multiple teams at PayPal, according to Craft: business development, customer service, fraud operations, HR, international, product management and design, sales and marketing.
PayPal became a publicly traded company on Nasdaq in 2002 and was acquired by eBay in the same year for $1.5 billion — and later spun out as a public company again.
Sacks founded the enterprise social network Yammer in 2008. He led the company as CEO and applied “consumer growth tactics to enterprise software” and acquired over eight million enterprise users, according to Craft. Microsoft bought Yammer in 2012 for $1.2 billion.
At PayPal, Sacks helped pioneer a key element of the emerging e-commerce market. At Yammer, he helped develop the enterprise segment of the emerging social networking market. With his significant executive experience at companies that scaled along with their emerging categories, Sacks should understand what technology companies and leaders in the fast-emerging AI market may need to scale — from infrastructure to talent and cybersecurity to regulation or deregulation.
PayPal’s reliance on data security and fraud prevention “aligns with AI's potential for analyzing large data sets,” which may lead Sacks to have a “data-centric approach” to AI, said Patra with ARCO Construction.
With his experience as a startup operator, Patra said Sacks may “advocate for policies that minimize barriers to entry for AI startups, fostering a climate of experimentation and disruption.”
Related Article: Streamlining Workflows With Slack AI: Hype vs. Reality
Branching Into Entertainment as a Feature Film Producer
After PayPal and before Yammer, Sacks started serving as a feature film producer in 2005 as a member of the Producers Guild of America.
Sacks produced “Thank You for Smoking,” which was nominated for best picture at the 2006 Golden Globes, and “Daliland,” which premiered at the 2022 Toronto International Film Festival.
Sacks’ interest in and presumed respect for the film industry may provide a bit of creative balance and perspective to his venture capital- and enterprise-based views on technology. As creators and creative unions legally seek and secure protections and conditions tied to the use of AI in industries such as film, music and art, Sacks should appreciate both their creative roles in large-scale entertainment ventures as well as their operational, financial and business value. His time as a producer may help him consider and mitigate possible adverse effects on creatives from generative AI in particular.
Sacks may “prioritize policies that balance AI innovation with protecting creators’ rights, addressing copyright and fair-use issues,” said Patra with ARCO Construction.
As the AI czar, he has an “interesting background that may not be typical for a leader in the AI policy space but could offer a valuable perspective,” said Suriel Arellano, a digital leadership consultant.
Related Article: 5 AI Case Studies in Entertainment
Creating a Public Platform as an Active Blogger and Podcaster
Sacks started blogging at “Bottom Up by David Sacks” on Substack in 2018. The blog covers his “lessons learned” as a founder and CEO and investor in SaaS companies.
His blog posts focus on topics relevant to startup founders: such as “Real-World Virality”; “The Gross Margin Problem”; “Product-Market Fit”; “Freemium vs. Free Trial”; “The One Who Defines the Category Wins the Category”; “Enterprises vs. SMBs”; “The Burn Multiple”; “Your Startup is a Movement”; and “The Give-to-Get Model for AI Startups.”
Sacks is also the co-host of “The All-In Podcast” with fellow entrepreneurs and investors Chamath Palihapitiya, Jason Calacanis and David Friedberg. The podcast, started in 2020, covers “all things economic, tech, political, social and poker.”
Some of the podcast’s latest episodes address recent events related to U.S. politics and the economy: “DOGE's Opportunity: Unleash American Growth by Cutting Regulations,” “Trump's Mandate: An Extinction-Level Event for Federal Bureaucracy” and “Markets Turn Trump, Long Rates Spike, Election Home Stretch, Influencer Mania, Saving Starbucks.”
At this fall’s “All-In Summit” at UCLA, the podcast featured a variety of notable guests from industry, government and higher education: such as U.S. Senator Krysten Synema (I-Arizona); Palo Alto Networks CEO Nikesh Arora; Waymo CEO Tekedra Mawakana; CAA Co-Founder Michael Ovitz; University of Chicago political science professor John Mearsheimer; Columbia University professor Jeffrey Sachs; Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff; PayPal Co-Founder Peter Thiel; Google Co-Founder Sergey Brin; Elon Musk, founder of xAI, Tesla and SpaceX; and U.S. Vice President-Elect J.D. Vance.
Sacks is a thought leader and influencer in the fields of venture capital, economics, business, technology and more through his blog and podcast. His writings, many podcast appearances and social media channels will give him a broad platform to promote his multi-disciplinary positions on the AI market. Sacks’ background, network and San Francisco base in the Silicon Valley give him added visibility and access to influencers in tech, business and government to learn about market-shaping issues in AI and advance the American AI market.
Sacks is going to look for “top minds” to work with in AI, said Arellano, saying he’ll likely work with leaders “from the sectors where he has had experience, and he has had lots of applicable experience.”
His Education is in Economics and Law
Sacks holds a B.A. in economics from Stanford University and a J.D. from The University of Chicago Law School.
Sacks’ status as a prominent alum of Stanford gives him access to the influential alumni network of the university, which is one of the leading alma maters for founders and leaders at market-shaping technology companies. His economics training should help him anticipate, understand and act on the many external conditions that can either drive or derail the AI market. Sacks’ law degree should equip him to face and address various legal issues in AI, such as copyright infringment in generative AI, as well as overall AI risk and ethics.
Sacks’ legal expertise could “drive a focus on modernizing intellectual property laws to address challenges posed by AI-generated content and patents,” said Patra with ARCO Construction.
Related Article: What AI Executives Need to Know About Fair-Use Law
