Jay Clayton named Trump’s artificial intelligence czar

Jay Clayton, the Securities and Exchange Commission chairman who built the agency’s first crypto enforcement machine, is reportedly in line to become President Trump’s next artificial intelligence czar. The choice would put a figure once blamed by the crypto industry for years of “regulation by enforcement” in charge of policy for an even faster-moving technology.

• Clayton would replace David Sacks, the combined crypto-and-AI czar who left the White House role in March.
• The SEC’s 2020 case against Ripple Labs, launched under Clayton, alleged the company failed to register $1.3 billion in XRP sales.
• Current SEC Chairman Paul Atkins, also a Trump appointee, had the agency drop the Ripple case last year.

• $1.3B unregistered XRP offering the SEC alleged Ripple ran since 2013
• $600M personal XRP sales by Ripple’s Larsen and Garlinghouse, per SEC
• 57 digital-asset enforcement cases the SEC brought during Clayton’s tenure
• 2017 year Clayton created the SEC’s Cyber Unit to police ICOs

Jay Clayton was appointed chairman by Trump in his first administration and exited the SEC in 2020. He is now on the verge of taking over as the Trump administration’s AI czar, according to reporting by CoinDesk. Clayton did not respond to a message from the outlet seeking comment on the appointment.

Since leaving the SEC, Clayton served as U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York and was appointed this year as Trump’s director of national intelligence. He has also spent recent years on the board of private equity firm Apollo Global Management, which has committed billions of dollars to AI and digital infrastructure projects.

SEC’s $1.3 billion Ripple case followed Clayton out the door

Clayton’s SEC filed its action against Ripple Labs in 2020, just as he was preparing to leave the agency. The SEC’s complaint accused Ripple and executives Christian Larsen and Bradley Garlinghouse of raising more than $1.3 billion through an unregistered digital asset securities offering dating to 2013. The agency also alleged Larsen and Garlinghouse personally sold roughly $600 million worth of XRP without registering those sales.

Then-SEC Enforcement Division Director Stephanie Avakian said at the time that Ripple, Larsen and Garlinghouse “failed to register their ongoing offer and sale of billions of XRP to retail investors,” depriving buyers of disclosures required under federal securities law, according to the agency’s press release. The case became one of the SEC’s most closely watched actions against a major digital asset company.

That fight did not survive the next change in SEC leadership. Chairman Paul Atkins, also a Trump appointee, had the agency dismiss further pursuit of the case last year, closing out a dispute that had run for roughly four years.

Cyber Unit and 57 enforcement cases set the template regulators later followed

Ripple was the capstone of a longer enforcement record, not its start. Clayton established the SEC’s “Cyber Unit” in 2017 to focus on digital assets, and the agency used it to police initial coin offerings and other crypto activity throughout his tenure.

By the time Clayton exited in 2020, the SEC’s own accomplishments summary counted 57 enforcement cases brought against digital asset, blockchain and ICO businesses. The agency described the cases as targeting “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.”

That same language resurfaced almost verbatim during Gary Gensler’s SEC chairmanship under President Biden, when the crypto industry accused the agency of regulating primarily through lawsuits rather than new rules. Clayton’s Cyber Unit had already laid that groundwork years earlier.

AI czar role drops the crypto portfolio Sacks once held

David Sacks served as Trump’s first czar overseeing both crypto and AI before leaving in March. Since then, crypto policy at the White House has been handled by adviser Patrick Witt, while the newer czar job now under discussion for Clayton appears focused solely on artificial intelligence.

Trump announced an “AI Force” on his Truth Social platform in September, comparing it to the Space Force he created in his first administration, and said he would name a “high IQ” individual to the AI czar post in the “near future.” The move came as Trump has defended a light-touch approach to AI regulation despite industry warnings over safety, according to reporting by the Wall Street Journal.

Clayton has described AI as a national security issue while rejecting calls to slow its development.

I don’t think any American should think that that’s a good strategy.

Jay Clayton, former SEC chairman, in an interview with CNBC

The BlockWest read. Crypto firms watching this appointment should look past Clayton’s Ripple history and focus on what it signals for oversight structure: AI policy is being split off and centralized, while crypto policy stays with a political adviser rather than a regulator with enforcement power. That arrangement leaves token issuers and exchanges dependent on Atkins’s SEC and Witt’s White House coordination, not on whoever runs AI Force.

Trump has not yet named his AI czar, and the White House has not confirmed Clayton as the pick. Whether Clayton’s enforcement-heavy record at the SEC carries over into how he would approach AI oversight remains an open question the administration has yet to answer.

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