Former U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Jay Clayton is reportedly on the verge of being named the Trump administration’s artificial intelligence czar, a role that appears to have a narrower mandate than the combined crypto and AI position previously held by David Sacks.

According to CoinDesk, Clayton would focus on the administration’s AI Force and oversee the rapidly expanding domestic industry. The precise responsibilities of the position remain unclear as President Donald Trump responds to concerns about the safety risks posed by increasingly capable machine intelligence. How the White House defines that mandate will help shape the direction of federal AI policy.

The new role does not appear to include crypto policy, although the two sectors have significant areas of overlap. Sacks, Trump’s first crypto and AI czar, left his crypto role in March, and White House crypto efforts have since been led by adviser Patrick Witt.

Clayton did not respond to a message from CoinDesk. Before his reported appointment as AI czar, he served as U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York and was appointed this year as Trump’s director of national intelligence. His record overseeing digital assets as SEC chairman could become relevant as the administration develops its approach to artificial intelligence and other emerging technologies.

Clayton’s tenure at the SEC laid the groundwork for the regulation-by-enforcement approach to crypto that the industry later criticized under Gary Gensler, a Democratic appointee of former President Joe Biden. Trump appointed Clayton to lead the SEC during his first administration.

Near the end of Clayton’s tenure in 2020, the SEC initiated its high-profile legal action against Ripple Labs. The agency accused Ripple of failing to register approximately $1.3 billion of its XRP tokens as securities, making the case one of the SEC’s major enforcement actions against a prominent crypto company. The case was later halted by current SEC Chairman Paul Atkins, another Trump appointee, whose agency dismissed further pursuit of the court action last year. The SEC’s 2020 announcement and subsequent litigation release document the case.

Ripple was only the final stage of a broader crypto enforcement record under Clayton. In 2017, he established the SEC’s “Cyber Unit” to focus on the emerging sector and began pursuing initial coin offerings, or ICOs, along with other digital-asset activity.

By the time Clayton left the agency in 2020, the SEC had issued a report describing his record, including 57 cases involving digital assets, blockchain businesses and ICOs. The agency said the cases concerned “efforts to defraud investors through the use of digital asset securities as well as violations of the registration provisions of the federal securities laws in the offer and sale of digital asset securities.” The SEC’s summary of Clayton’s tenure outlines those accomplishments.

That language later became familiar to crypto industry participants who challenged the SEC under Gensler. Clayton’s record could therefore draw scrutiny from the AI industry if he takes a leading role in shaping policy for another rapidly developing technology sector.

Trump himself was a crypto skeptic during his first term in the White House and afterward. Referring to the “bitcoins of the world” in a 2021 interview, he said, “I think they should regulate them very, very high.”

Trump later adopted a more supportive position toward digital assets. His activities in the sector included an initial foray into non-fungible tokens, or NFTs, the launch of a self-referential memecoin and a stake in World Liberty Financial. He presented himself as a crypto supporter during the 2024 campaign and, after returning to the White House, appointed Sacks to oversee both crypto and AI policy. Trump’s NFT initiative was reported by CoinDesk.
The administration’s current czar position now appears to be centered on AI, potentially leaving White House crypto policy in the hands of Patrick Witt, who is expected to depart his advisory role. When Trump announced the AI Force on his Truth Social platform in September, he compared it with the Space Force, which he created during his first administration. Trump said he would announce an AI czar in the “near future” and described the prospective appointee as a “high IQ” individual. The formal appointment and a precise definition of the czar’s duties remain the immediate items to watch, including whether crypto policy stays outside the portfolio. The announcement is available on Truth Social.

Before returning to public service as U.S. attorney, Clayton spent several years on the board of Apollo Global Management, the private equity firm that committed billions of dollars to artificial intelligence and digital infrastructure projects. That board experience gave him exposure to large-scale AI and digital infrastructure investing before his return to government.

In a recent CNBC interview, Clayton said he viewed AI as a national-security issue but rejected calls to pause the technology’s development.

“I don’t think any American should think that that’s a good strategy,” he said.