{"id":836866,"date":"2025-09-09T17:30:00","date_gmt":"2025-09-09T15:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=836866"},"modified":"2025-09-09T16:43:26","modified_gmt":"2025-09-09T14:43:26","slug":"the-south-african-billionaire-who-became-one-of-the-richest-people-in-san-francisco-and-works-in-the-white-house","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wealth\/836866\/the-south-african-billionaire-who-became-one-of-the-richest-people-in-san-francisco-and-works-in-the-white-house\/","title":{"rendered":"The South African billionaire who became one of the richest people in San Francisco and works in the White House"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

David Sacks is a South African-born businessman who has become one of the most influential figures in Silicon Valley and Washington, DC.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He built several billion-dollar companies before being tapped as the White House\u2019s AI and crypto czar. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sacks was born in Cape Town to a Jewish family and moved to Tennessee with his parents when he was five years old. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sacks attended Memphis University School and earned his bachelor\u2019s degree in economics from Stanford University in 1994.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That decision would change his life. Confinity\u2019s payment product soon evolved into PayPal, and Sacks became the company\u2019s first head of product before being promoted to chief operating officer. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

He built and oversaw core teams in product design, marketing, business development, international expansion, customer service, and fraud prevention. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This success gave rise to the now-famous \u201cPayPal Mafia,\u201d a group of early employees and founders, which includes Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, and Reid Hoffman.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Shift from founder to politics <\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

His biggest win came in 2008, when he launched Yammer, the first major enterprise social network. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The platform allowed employees to collaborate and communicate securely within companies, and it spread quickly thanks to its viral adoption model.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Within four years, Yammer had more than eight million enterprise users and became one of the fastest-growing SaaS companies in history.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The success caught Microsoft\u2019s attention, and in 2012, it acquired Yammer for $1.2 billion (R21.3 billion) and integrated it into its cloud and collaboration tools.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After Yammer, Sacks shifted his focus to venture capital. In 2017, he co-founded Craft Ventures, which began with a $350 million fund.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Over the years, Craft grew rapidly, raising a $500 million fund in 2019, followed by $1.3 billion across two new funds in 2021. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

By 2023, Craft Ventures managed assets of $3.3 billion (R58.6 billion), backing a wide range of technology startups.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, Sacks\u2019s latest and perhaps most surprising chapter came with politics. At the end of 2024, President Donald Trump appointed him as the White House\u2019s AI and crypto czar.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This was a newly created position tasked with developing a legal framework for cryptocurrencies while also advising on science and technology policy. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In addition to leading crypto regulation efforts, Sacks was also named to the President\u2019s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bloomberg reported that Sacks would serve as a \u201cspecial government employee,\u201d allowing him to work for the administration up to 130 days per year without requiring Senate confirmation or extensive financial disclosures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To comply with ethics requirements, Sacks and Craft Ventures divested their direct cryptocurrency holdings, though they maintained stakes in crypto-related startups.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Today, he is worth an estimated $200 million (R3.5 billion) and lives among the wealthy elite of San Francisco\u2019s Pacific Heights, in the neighbourhood known as \u201cBillionaire\u2019s Row,\u201d with his wife and three children.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

Sacks’ mansion along Billionaire\u2019s Row<\/h2>\n\n\n
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Source: Noah Berger, The San Francisco Standard<\/a><\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n
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\"\"<\/a>
Source: Noah Berger, The San Francisco Standard<\/a><\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n
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\"\"<\/a>
Source: Noah Berger, The San Francisco Standard<\/a><\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n
\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

David Sacks is a South African-born businessman who has become one of the most influential figures in Silicon Valley and Washington, DC.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":92,"featured_media":836890,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9880],"tags":[23543,21989,149,3659,3170],"class_list":["post-836866","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-wealth","tag-craft-ventures","tag-david-sacks","tag-paypal","tag-white-house","tag-yammer"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/836866","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/92"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=836866"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/836866\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":836886,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/836866\/revisions\/836886"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/836890"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=836866"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=836866"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=836866"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}