US President Donald Trump has appointed a number of billionaires, including Mark Zuckerberg and Sergey Brin, to an influential White House advisory council.
Named the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST), the committee is expected to advise the President on matters including AI, nuclear energy, education technology and cybersecurity, among others.
Of the 13 individuals appointed to the PCAST, eight are billionaires, including five of the top 10. Google co-founder Sergey Brin is the wealthiest person on the committee, with a net worth of $221.9 billion – Brin, the fourth-wealthiest person in the world, is involved in work on Google’s AI model, Gemini. The fifth-richest person in the world, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, is also a member of Trump’s PCAST, as is Oracle founder Larry Ellison, the world’s sixth-richest billionaire. Other UHNWs on the committee are AI chip multibillionaire Jensen Huang, with a fortune of $154.8 billion, and Michael Dell, with wealth amounting to $151.4 billion, who are the seventh- and eighth-richest people in the world respectively.
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Addressing Trump’s new PCAST, a statement issued by the White House said: ‘Under President Trump, PCAST will focus on topics related to the opportunities and challenges that emerging technologies present to the American workforce and ensuring all Americans thrive in the Golden Age of Innovation.’
Co-chairing the committee are David Sacks, an early COO of the financial payment firm PayPal, and Michael Kratsios, the director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy in the White House, who used to work for multibillionaire venture capitalist Peter Thiel.
The news of these appointments comes as some US states are considering taxes on the ultra-wealthy. A ‘billionaires tax’ has been proposed in California, which would incur a one-time five per cent wealth tax on billionaires living in the state. This bill is not yet confirmed and is aiming to be voted on in November this year. A tax on millionaires was approved in Washington state earlier this month, imposing a 9.9 per cent levy on personal income above $1 million.
While ultra-wealthy tech entrepreneurs make up the majority of Trump’s PCAST, there are names from the world of scientific research on the committee too. One of the winners of the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2025, John Martinis, who won the award for research into quantum mechanical physics, sits on Trump’s committee.
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The number of billionaires on this iteration of the PCAST sets it apart from those of the past.
Former president Joe Biden’s science and technology committee included leading US academics such as Princeton University’s Dr Steve Pacala, an ecology and evolution expert, and Dr Jennifer Richeson, a Yale University professor specialising in social perception and communication. Lisa T. Su, the billionaire CEO of AI microchip developer Advanced Micro Devices, served on Biden’s PCAST and now serves on Trump’s one too.
The PCAST may be composed of up to 24 members and additional individuals could be appointed to the committee in the future, according to a statement from the White House.
[See also: Where did the world’s richest billionaires go to school?]
