The South African billionaire who became one of the richest people in San Francisco and works in the White House
David Sacks is a South African-born businessman who has become one of the most influential figures in Silicon Valley and Washington, DC.
He built several billion-dollar companies before being tapped as the White House’s AI and crypto czar.
Sacks was born in Cape Town to a Jewish family and moved to Tennessee with his parents when he was five years old.
While his father worked as an endocrinologist, Sacks was more interested in business. He has said his grandfather, who founded a candy factory in the 1920s, was the family figure who inspired his career path.
Sacks attended Memphis University School and earned his bachelor’s degree in economics from Stanford University in 1994.
He then studied law at the University of Chicago, graduating in 1998. Like many of his peers at the time, he initially worked in management consulting at McKinsey & Company.
However, in 1999, at the height of the dot-com boom, he left consulting to join Confinity, an ambitious e-commerce startup founded by Max Levchin, Peter Thiel, and Luke Nosek.
That decision would change his life. Confinity’s payment product soon evolved into PayPal, and Sacks became the company’s first head of product before being promoted to chief operating officer.
He built and oversaw core teams in product design, marketing, business development, international expansion, customer service, and fraud prevention.
When PayPal went public in 2002, it was one of the first IPOs after the 9/11 attacks, with shares jumping 54% on the first day of trading. Just months later, eBay acquired PayPal for $1.5 billion (R26.6 billion).
This success gave rise to the now-famous “PayPal Mafia,” a group of early employees and founders, which includes Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, and Reid Hoffman.
They went on to create some of the most influential companies in Silicon Valley. Sacks was firmly part of this group, using his payout to build new ventures.
Shift from founder to politics
His biggest win came in 2008, when he launched Yammer, the first major enterprise social network.
The platform allowed employees to collaborate and communicate securely within companies, and it spread quickly thanks to its viral adoption model.
Within four years, Yammer had more than eight million enterprise users and became one of the fastest-growing SaaS companies in history.
The success caught Microsoft’s attention, and in 2012, it acquired Yammer for $1.2 billion (R21.3 billion) and integrated it into its cloud and collaboration tools.
After Yammer, Sacks shifted his focus to venture capital. In 2017, he co-founded Craft Ventures, which began with a $350 million fund.
Over the years, Craft grew rapidly, raising a $500 million fund in 2019, followed by $1.3 billion across two new funds in 2021.
By 2023, Craft Ventures managed assets of $3.3 billion (R58.6 billion), backing a wide range of technology startups.
However, Sacks’s latest and perhaps most surprising chapter came with politics. At the end of 2024, President Donald Trump appointed him as the White House’s AI and crypto czar.
This was a newly created position tasked with developing a legal framework for cryptocurrencies while also advising on science and technology policy.
Trump praised him as someone who would safeguard free speech online, challenge Big Tech censorship, and ensure the crypto industry had the clarity it had long demanded.
In addition to leading crypto regulation efforts, Sacks was also named to the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology.
Bloomberg reported that Sacks would serve as a “special government employee,” allowing him to work for the administration up to 130 days per year without requiring Senate confirmation or extensive financial disclosures.
To comply with ethics requirements, Sacks and Craft Ventures divested their direct cryptocurrency holdings, though they maintained stakes in crypto-related startups.
Today, he is worth an estimated $200 million (R3.5 billion) and lives among the wealthy elite of San Francisco’s Pacific Heights, in the neighbourhood known as “Billionaire’s Row,” with his wife and three children.
Sacks’ mansion along Billionaire’s Row
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