President Donald Trump is expected to name Jay Clayton as the White House’s artificial intelligence czar, a move that would put the country’s approach to AI oversight in the hands of a former Wall Street regulator best known for an aggressive crackdown on crypto. The expected pick, reported on October 2, 2026, comes after years in which Clayton built a reputation as the architect of the Securities and Exchange Commission’s “regulation-by-enforcement” era for digital assets.
Key takeaways
Jay Clayton is expected to take on the AI czar role while continuing to serve as Director of National Intelligence.
As SEC chairman, he started the agency’s Cyber Unit and pursued 57 enforcement actions against crypto firms and ICOs.
His SEC sued Ripple Labs over $1.3 billion in XRP sales, a case later dropped under Chairman Paul Atkins.
Clayton calls AI a national security matter but opposes pausing its development.
Jay Clayton’s Expected Appointment as AI Czar
Trump teased the appointment in early October 2026, according to a source familiar with the matter cited by NBC News. The announcement would follow a lengthy White House meeting on Tuesday with executives from leading technology companies, which Clayton attended.
Asked about the pending move, a White House official told NBC News: “Any personnel announcement will be announced directly by the President. Any reporting until then is baseless speculation.” Unlike the earlier version of the czar job, this one appears to leave crypto out of the equation entirely, focusing instead on the administration’s newly created AI Force, an effort Trump has compared to the Space Force he launched during his first term, according to CoinDesk.
A Regulatory Record Built on Crypto Enforcement
Clayton’s history with emerging technology did not start with artificial intelligence. During his time leading the SEC in the earlier Trump era, he contributed to establishing the agency’s enforcement-driven method of overseeing digital assets, an approach that would go on to shape how Chairman Gary Gensler ran the commission under President Biden, CoinDesk reported.
In 2017, Clayton established the SEC’s Cyber Unit to police the fast-growing crypto sector, targeting initial coin offerings and related activity. By the time he left the agency in 2020, the SEC had brought 57 enforcement cases against digital-asset firms, blockchain businesses and ICOs, framed around what the agency called efforts “to defraud investors through the use of digital asset securities” and violations of federal registration rules.
The Ripple Labs Case and XRP Securities Claim
The most prominent case from that record targeted Ripple Labs, which the SEC accused of failing to register roughly $1.3 billion worth of XRP token sales as securities, a lawsuit Clayton launched just before leaving the agency in 2020. The case dragged on for years before current SEC Chairman Paul Atkins, another Trump appointee, moved last year to dismiss further pursuit of the action, according to CoinDesk.
A Shifting White House Tech Leadership
The expected appointment also marks a split from how Trump originally organized his technology policy team. David Sacks served as the administration’s combined special adviser for AI and crypto from January 2025 until he left the role in March, when he moved to co-chair the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, NBC News reported. Since then, White House crypto efforts have been led separately by adviser Patrick Witt, while the AI side of the portfolio now appears headed toward Clayton.
Trump’s relationship with crypto itself shifted dramatically over the same stretch. He was openly skeptical of the “bitcoins of the world” in a 2021 interview, saying they should be “regulate[d]… very, very high,” before reinventing himself as a vocal booster of the industry during his 2024 campaign, CoinDesk noted.
Clayton’s Stance on AI and National Security
Speaking on CNBC during the week of the White House tech meeting, Clayton described artificial intelligence in stark terms. “Superintelligence is a national security issue,” he said, using language the administration has formally adopted, adding that the idea “was something that was recognized yesterday by not just the industry leaders, but everybody in the room,” according to NBC News. He also said the administration would take a “whole-of-government approach” to regulating the technology.
At the same time, Clayton rejected calls to slow down AI development. “I don’t think any American should think that that’s a good strategy,” he said, according to CoinDesk. Before returning to government this year as Director of National Intelligence and, earlier, as a U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, Clayton spent several years on the board of private equity firm Apollo Global Management, which has committed billions of dollars to AI and digital infrastructure projects.
Article produced with the assistance of artificial intelligence and reviewed by the editorial team.