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Donald Trump has tapped a suite of Silicon Valley billionaires including Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, Oracle’s Larry Ellison and venture capitalist Marc Andreessen to advise the White House on science and technology policy.
They will serve alongside 10 others on the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, a body that in previous administrations has consisted mainly of academics and engineers with particular expertise.
The council will be co-chaired by David Sacks, a Silicon Valley venture capitalist who has served as the White House’s AI and crypto tsar.
The move by the Trump administration will deepen the ties between the industry and the White House, which has regularly hosted tech executives for dinners and closed-door discussions, and consistently pushed policies that are favourable to the sector.
Several of the members of the council have also made large donations to the president’s causes. Andreessen last year gave $2.5mn to a Trump-linked Super Pac, and spent $4.5mn backing Trump’s 2024 election campaign.
Fred Ehrsam, co-founder of the crypto exchange Coinbase, gave $1mn to Trump’s inauguration committee last year, as did Zuckerberg’s Meta.
“Under President Trump, [the council] will focus on topics related to the opportunities and challenges that emerging technologies present to the American workforce, and ensuring all Americans thrive in the Golden Age of Innovation,” the White House said.
Others committee members named on Wednesday included Nvidia’s Jensen Huang, Google co-founder Sergey Brin, executive vice-chair of Oracle Safra Catz, investor and podcaster David Friedberg and AMD boss Lisa Su. The White House said more members would be added at a later date.
The appointments come as the Trump administration continues to advocate for the tech industry, relaxing export controls for AI chips, fast-tracking data centre construction and backing light-touch regulation.
Last week, it released an AI policy framework that favoured narrow laws to govern the technology and called for a ban on state-level rules. The move was cheered by the industry lobby and AI investors, despite polls showing widespread public support, including among Trump voters, for tighter regulation of the sector.
The White House is also pushing for the passage of market structure legislation for the crypto sector — a move that the industry says will unlock growth opportunities.
However, several large tech companies recently criticised the administration over its punishment of Anthropic, which was designated a supply chain risk after it refused to grant the Pentagon unrestricted use of its technology in warfare.
Groups representing the sector last week said the designation was “causing immediate and substantial harm to the technology industry”.
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