David Sacks
Net worth: Reportedly over $1 Billion
Who is David Sacks?
- David Sacks is a Silicon Valley tech billionaire and venture capitalist who was the founding Chief Operating Officer of PayPal. Much of Sacks’ wealth was amassed alongside Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, and other members of the “PayPal mafia” in 2002 after the money-transfer firm was sold to eBay for an estimated $1.5 billion.
- Sacks went on to found and flip other tech firms like Yammer, a so-called “business social network” company that Microsoft acquired in 2012 for $1.2 billion.
- As a venture capitalist, Sacks has also made multiple early investments in some of Big Tech’s most influential companies including Affirm, AirBnB, Eventbrite, Facebook, Lyft, Postmates, Reddit, Slack, SpaceX, Twitter and Uber.
- Sacks played a role in spreading the panic that led to the run on Silicon Valley Bank in March 2023 and was prominent in demanding a bailout.
- Outside of business—as an author, podcaster, and pundit—Sacks has built a reputation as a conservative provocateur.
- In 1996, Sacks and Peter Thiel co-wrote the book “The Diversity Myth: Multiculturalism And Political Intolerance On Campus.” In it, the pair characterized date rape as “seductions that were later regretted;” perceptions of racism as overreactions to “unintentional slights;” and efforts to raise awareness of sexual assault on college campuses as a “rape crisis movement.”
- In a 2017 interview with the conservative journalist Megyn Kelly, Sacks referred to Democratic Party politicians as “useful idiots for the Chinese Communist Party.”
- Sacks celebrated Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter as akin to the fall of the Berlin Wall, claiming that it was “the first time that you saw somebody stand up to this galloping wave of censorship that we’ve been seeing.”
How Is David Sacks Leading The Trump Corporitist Agenda?
- Sacks joined the White House as a “Special Government Employee”—a temporary designation with less stringent ethics requirements than those required of full-time federal employees—and served as Special Advisor on AI and Crypto.
- Sacks co-authored two of the Trump administration’s most sweeping AI policy documents: the July 2025 AI Action Plan and the March 2026 National Policy Framework for AI. Both documents framed AI development as a race for global dominance, justifying broad deregulation and federal subsidies for the industry.
- In March 2026, Sacks stepped down as Special Advisor, but Trump simultaneously appointed him co-chair of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology.
What Does David Sacks Have To Gain From The Trump Administration?
- Being both “super early in crypto” himself and a vocal critic of Biden-era efforts to reign in the tech industry, Sacks now holds major influence shaping the regulatory and legal framework for cryptocurrency and artificial intelligence policy.
- Unsurprisingly, insiders within these sectors, like Tyler Winkelvoss and John Reed, have lauded Sacks as an “excellent choice” to “steer the future of crypto and AI innovation in America.”
- Under Sacks’ watch, the Trump administration dropped SEC cases against crypto giants including Binance, Ripple, and Coinbase while shuttering the DOJ’s crypto enforcement unit.
- Sacks reportedly had over $200 million in crypto holdings prior to his appointment as AI Czar.
For more information, see the Revolving Door Project’s Oligarchs in Trump World tracker.