Trump's AI Czar: Treasury Secretary Bessent reportedly the frontrunner for the post

TVS News AI, editorially supervised, presents Trump's AI Czar: Treasury Secretary Bessent reportedly the frontrunner for the post.

According to a media report, US President Donald Trump could entrust his Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent with the US government's AI policy going forward. This is reported by the US news portal Semafor, as picked up by the IT portal Golem.

Should Bessent take on the role, responsibility for the US government's AI strategy would lie directly with the head of the Treasury Department. In the English-speaking world, the term "AI Czar" is commonly used for such a special envoy.

Who is in the running?

According to Semafor, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is considered the frontrunner for the post of AI czar under Trump. However, no official appointment is yet associated with this — the report explicitly speaks only of a frontrunner, not of a personnel decision already made.

What is known so far — and what is not

What specific tasks would be associated with the post, how AI policy would be organizationally integrated into the Treasury Department, and when Trump could announce a decision — none of this is revealed in the available report. Semafor also provides no information on possible additional candidates or a precise timeline.

What the personnel decision would mean

What placing AI policy under the Treasury Department would concretely mean — for example, greater integration with export controls for high-performance chips or the financing of data centers — depends on the scope of duties that Trump defines for the post. What is clear so far is: should Bessent actually take over, AI would be organizationally anchored differently in Washington than in many other governments that provide separate digital or tech departments for this purpose.