Move Over Elon: Tech Billionaires Make More Inroads in Trump’s Administration—and He’s Even Quoting Them Directly 

The tech industry heavyweights who lavishly supported Donald Trump’s successful presidential campaign are being rewarded with influential posts for his second White House term. 

On Thursday evening, the president-elect announced that venture capitalist David Sacks would join his administration as an AI and crypto czar, an advisory role that doesn’t require Senate approval as do official agency appointments. 

“In this important role, David will guide policy for the Administration in Artificial Intelligence and Cryptocurrency, two areas critical to the future of American competitiveness. David will focus on making America the clear global leader in both areas,” Trump wrote on Truth Social, the platform he owns. 

Sacks’s role will also involve tackling “Big Tech bias and censorship” and establishing “a legal framework so the Crypto industry has the clarity it has been asking for,” Trump wrote.

Conservatives have for years held a contemptuous view of tech companies such as Meta and the former Twitter for what they claim was a policy of censoring conservative voices. Google, whose parent company is Alphabet, has also been in the GOP’s sights over the same claims of censorship. In September, Trump called for the search giant to be criminally prosecuted, claiming that the company favored results of his opponent Kamala Harris. Google is currently being investigated by the Department of Justice, but not over Trump’s erroneous claims. Last month, the DOJ called for Google to sell its Chrome browser, which the department claims gives the company an unfair advantage in the online advertising landscape. 

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg is open to playing nice with the Trump administration, having visited Mar-a-Lago in recent weeks. Twitter is no more and has been rebranded as X, which is owned by Trump’s megadonor Elon Musk. X has been hit by allegations of right-wing bias.  

Sacks, a member of the “PayPal mafia” that helped found the payments company, served as its chief operating officer, and has been a vocal supporter of Trump during the campaign. He regularly uses his X account to sing the former president’s praises on a variety of issues related to the economy and immigration. 

His views often veer into fringe territory. He has been vehemently opposed to American aid going to Ukraine to help that nation stave off Russia’s invasion and daily bombing attacks on its people and infrastructure. He has said the conflict is a “war of lies.” Sacks runs the VC firm Craft Ventures and made early bets on Silicon Valley juggernauts such as Facebook, Palantir, Uber, and Airbnb. He spoke at the Republican National Convention in July and will pursue a much more deregulatory agenda on crypto than Joe Biden’s administration. 

Individuals associated with Craft Ventures donated heavily to Republican candidates during the election cycle, according to data from Open Secrets. 

Sacks isn’t the only VC titan who has Trump’s ear. In a Wednesday post on Truth Social, Trump nominated Gail Slater, a former Federal Trade Commission attorney and Roku executive, as the Department of Justice’s head of antitrust. 

Trump wrote: “Big Tech has run wild for years, stifling competition in our most innovative sector and, as we all know, using its market power to crack down on the rights of so many Americans, as well as those of Little Tech! I was proud to fight these abuses in my First Term, and our Department of Justice’s antitrust team will continue that work under Gail’s leadership.”

Slater has been recognized as a critic of Big Tech and could be expected to stymie potential M&A activity. 

Trump’s mention of “Little Tech” is an invocation of Marc Andreessen, the billionaire founder of VC firm Andreessen Horowitz. Andreessen coined the term in a July blog that lambasted the state of startup regulation under President Biden.  

Like Sacks, Andreessen had previously donated to Democratic and Republican candidates throughout his career, but made a full MAGA-pivot after an attempted assassination of Trump in July. 

Both men seek to influence the regulatory agenda that sets the tone for the future of tech, with Andreessen purportedly focused on “Little Tech,” or startups. The arrangement would prolong both mens’ stature at the top of the industry, as their investments in companies that came to dominate Silicon Valley have made both men fabulously wealthy: Andreessen can count investments in Facebook, Airbnb, and Twitter among A16Z’s most successful portfolio companies. 

Andreessen and his A16Z co-founder Ben Horowitz donated $2.5 million each to a pro-Trump Super PAC in October.