Trump's AI Power Broker Council Takes Shape—Without Musk or Altman

President Trump has unveiled the membership of his reconstituted President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST), and the roster is raising eyebrows across Silicon Valley. The newly appointed council reads like a who's-who of American tech titans—but notable by their absence are two of the most vocal figures in AI: Elon Musk and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.

The Inner Circle

The council, which can include up to 24 members, will be co-chaired by White House AI and crypto czar David Sacks and senior technology adviser Michael Kratsios. Among the luminaries appointed:

• Mark Zuckerberg – Meta CEO, whose Llama open-source models have reshaped AI competition
• Jensen Huang – Nvidia CEO, whose chips power virtually every major AI system on the planet
• Larry Ellison – Oracle executive chairman, who has been aggressively pivoting the company toward AI cloud infrastructure
• Marc Andreessen – Andreessen Horowitz co-founder and prominent pro-AI voice
• Sergey Brin – Google co-founder, who has reportedly returned to active involvement at the company amid the AI race
• Lisa Su – AMD CEO, whose AI chips are increasingly competing with Nvidia
• Safra Catz – Former Oracle CEO
• Michael Dell – Dell Technologies founder and CEO

The council was established by executive order in January, with Trump declaring that "as our global competitors race to exploit these technologies, it is a national security imperative for the United States to achieve and maintain unquestioned and unchallenged global technological dominance."

"The council 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."

— White House Office of Science and Technology Policy press release

The Conspicuous Absences

Perhaps more telling than who's on the list is who isn't. Elon Musk, who led the now-disbanded Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) and whose xAI company is developing the Grok model, is nowhere to be found. Neither is Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI—the company most synonymous with the current AI moment. Microsoft, the largest outside investor in OpenAI, has no representation either.

The exclusion of Musk is particularly notable given his past relationship with the Trump administration. Observers note the council skews heavily toward commercial AI deployment and infrastructure—Nvidia, Oracle, Dell, AMD—rather than the research-and-safety-focused world that OpenAI and Anthropic inhabit.

A Notably Homogeneous Group

The lineup has also drawn attention for its lack of diversity. Safra Catz and Lisa Su are the only two women on the council. More strikingly, John Martinis—a physicist and quantum computing professor at UC Santa Barbara—is the sole academic researcher, in a group otherwise dominated by industry leaders and investors. Critics have noted the absence of AI safety researchers, ethicists, or civil society representatives in a body advising on one of the most consequential technologies in human history.

What the Council Will Do

Each U.S. president since Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1933 has established a PCAST advisory committee. While the council's recommendations are advisory rather than binding, its membership signals which companies and viewpoints will have the ear of the White House as Congress drafts AI legislation, the administration negotiates international AI standards, and federal agencies develop AI procurement policies.

The council's formation comes as the Trump administration has been actively shaping AI policy, releasing a framework for Congress to address issues including intellectual property rights, children's privacy, and developing an "AI-ready workforce."

With the AI race accelerating on both the domestic and geopolitical fronts, who gets a seat at this particular table—and who doesn't—may prove consequential for years to come.