Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has surfaced as a leading candidate to serve as President Donald Trump’s next artificial intelligence coordinator, according to people familiar with internal discussions. The reports come days after Trump said he would name an “AI czar” and stand up an “AI force,” without spelling out how either would work.
The idea is not a done deal.
Officials caution that Trump has not settled on a choice and has a history of surprising picks.
The Treasury Department has not commented. A White House spokesman dismissed unpublished personnel chatter as speculation.
Still, Bessent’s name is circulating because he already sits at the center of the administration’s AI and China brief.
That role was on display this week. On the sidelines of the United Nations gathering in New York, Bessent met Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng ahead of Trump’s planned session with President Xi Jinping. Artificial intelligence dominated the conversation.
Afterward, Bessent said Washington had floated a notification channel for AI incidents with national-security implications, plus a broader US-China dialogue on the technology.
The pitch mixed risk management with strategic competition: keep lines open, but do not cede ground.
Bessent has been more visible on AI policy in recent months.
As the Cabinet official most closely tied to US-China economic relations, he has taken a hard line on Chinese efforts to distill American models, calling that practice intellectual-property theft and warning of sanctions or Entity List designations.
Allies say he has also pressed the White House to move faster on Western open-weight models so the United States and partners do not fall behind.
That mix of finance, trade leverage, and tech rivalry is part of why some insiders see him as a natural fit for a cross-cutting AI post.
He already carries an unusually wide portfolio.
A former hedge-fund manager, Bessent has been tasked with reshaping trade policy, talks with Ukraine over critical minerals, a temporary turn at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and acting leadership of the Internal Revenue Service.
Treasury is also driving economic pressure on Iran.
Adding an AI mandate on top of that would be a lot of hats, though the administration has used dual titles before.
Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, for example, has also been described as energy czar while keeping his Cabinet job.
One open question is whether Bessent would keep Treasury if selected, or simply add the AI portfolio.
He is not the only name in play.
Other figures mentioned include Michael Kratsios, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and a longtime Trump technology ally, and Scott Kupor, who left Andreessen Horowitz to run the Office of Personnel Management.
The vacancy exists because David Sacks, the previous AI and crypto czar, left the formal government post earlier this year after hitting limits on special government employees, though he has remained an influential outside voice.
The timing is political as well as technical. Lawmakers in Washington have grown louder about AI risks.
Trump, by contrast, has generally played down those fears and argued that extra regulation is not needed.
Bessent himself struck a middle note in a recent television interview, saying an AI czar would “put context, shape and contours around these questions,” while stressing that people, not machines, remain accountable for what AI systems do.
If the appointment happens, it would fold AI policy more tightly into the economic and geopolitical machinery Bessent already runs.
That could sharpen the administration’s competition-first approach toward China.
It could also raise questions about bandwidth, conflicts between financial regulation and industrial strategy, and whether a finance chief is the right person to referee safety, export controls, and domestic build-out at once. For now, the reports describe a frontrunner, not a nominee.
