David Sacks, the venture capitalist who had been serving as President Trump’s Special Advisor on AI and Crypto, announced that he is no longer a special government employee. That SGE status let him split time between his private business and the White House for up to 130 days. He told reporters he has now "used up that time."

Shifting to PCAST

Sacks said he will concentrate on co-chairing the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, or PCAST. He told interviewer Ed Ludlow that the PCAST role is about giving advice to the president and the White House, not managing federal agencies. "We are going to study issues and make recommendations," he said, plain and simple.

Who's on the council

  • Mark Zuckerberg
  • Marc Andreessen
  • Jensen Huang
  • Sergey Brin
  • Michael Kratsios will serve as co-chair alongside Sacks

What Sacks did in the Oval Office

As the AI and crypto point person, Sacks had direct access to the Oval Office and played a major role crafting the White House's tech policies. He also hosted a large Silicon Valley fundraiser for Trump in 2024, which helped cement his inside role.

Why his stint ended with a thud

Sacks pushed an aggressive agenda that included efforts to block state-level AI rules through federal preemption, first in Congress and then via executive action. Those moves backfired politically. Republican governors and populist voters pushed back, and allies said the fight made other policy wins harder to achieve.

Michael Toscano, executive director at the conservative Institute for Family Studies, put it bluntly. He called Sacks a "political disaster" and said the preemption push turned the administration against some of its own voters.

A final political mistake

Last week Sacks also publicly criticized the president, saying on his podcast All In that the president needed to find an "off-ramp" from the conflict with Iran. Publicly disagreeing with the president is rarely a career booster in this White House.

The admin's favorite move: reassign, do not fire

During this second administration, controversial appointees have often been reassigned rather than fired. Examples include a national security adviser moved to a UN ambassadorship and a former homeland security chief reassigned as a special envoy for an initiative called Shield of the Americas. Reassignment seems to be the tool of choice when an appointee becomes politically inconvenient.

For now Sacks will remain influential as a PCAST co-chair, offering advice on a wider set of tech topics. But his active, combative period as the White House AI and crypto czar is officially over.