David Sacks

David O. Sacks (born 1972 in Cape Town, South Africa) is an American venture capitalist and entrepreneur: founding COO of PayPal, founder of Yammer (sold to Microsoft for $1.2 billion), founder of Craft Ventures, and one of the four “besties” of the All-In podcast. In December 2024, President-elect Trump named him the first White House AI and crypto czar, a role he took up in 2025 while remaining a Silicon Valley operator.

Architect of the pro-AI posture

Sacks has organized US AI policy around a single premise: a narrow, perishable lead over China that regulation could squander. He has argued repeatedly against an “FDA for AI,” against the patchwork of roughly a thousand state AI bills, and for letting “the private sector cook” — positions expressed in the administration’s AI Action Plan and its push for federal preemption of state AI laws. He works in tandem with JD Vance, whose Paris summit speech turned this posture into doctrine.

He is also the debate’s most combative pro-AI polemicist. In November 2025 he claimed public AI distrust was manufactured by a “Doomer Industrial Complex” — a network of effective-altruist funders spending on AI-fear advocacy — citing polling that 83% of Chinese respondents see AI’s benefits outweighing harms versus 39% of Americans.

Critics point to unprecedented conflicts of interest — a sitting czar with active AI and crypto investments, operating under ethics waivers — and argue that framing all skepticism as funded doomerism dodges legitimate safety questions. Sacks answers that fear-mongering could “kill these things in the cradle,” and that innovation, energy, and chips are the real safety policy.