Sen. Bernie Sanders introduced legislation Thursday, June 18, that would force the largest U.S. artificial intelligence companies to hand over half their stock to a new government-managed fund, an attempt to give ordinary Americans a financial stake in an industry he says is concentrating wealth and power in the hands of a small group of tech executives.
The bill, called the American AI Sovereign Wealth Fund Act, would impose a one-time 50% tax on the equity of AI companies with more than $200 million in annual revenue, paid not in cash but in shares of stock. Those shares would go into a sovereign wealth fund used to pay dividends to taxpayers and help fund priorities such as education, health care, and housing.
“Left unchecked, artificial intelligence and robotics threaten the jobs, privacy rights, and mental health of every man, woman, and child in America,” Sanders, an independent from Vermont who caucuses with Democrats, said in announcing the bill.
“As a society, we can no longer sit back and allow a handful of Big Tech oligarchs to determine the future of this revolutionary technology with no democratic input.”
Sanders said the bill would do three things: create a seven-member Independent Commission for Democratic AI, with members nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate, to vote the fund’s shares in the public interest; require companies that run both AI and non-AI businesses to spin off their AI operations so the public stake applies cleanly; and direct the wealth generated by AI toward broad public benefit rather than what Sanders called further enriching “the richest people in the world.”
Third, it would guarantee that the economic benefits generated by AI are used to improve the lives of all of us — not simply to make the richest people in the world even richer.
At current valuations, Sanders’ office estimated the fund would be worth roughly $7 trillion, large enough that a 5% annual dividend could send more than $1,000 to every American to start. Sanders said payouts could grow substantially if AI companies continue to expand at the pace many analysts predict, and that the companies. not the federal government, would absorb losses if their value falls.
Sanders pointed to the roughly 100 sovereign wealth funds operating worldwide, including Norway’s oil-financed fund and Alaska’s Permanent Fund, which has paid residents annual dividends for 50 years, as precedent for the idea that the public should share directly in wealth generated by a shared resource.
Sanders told NPR during an interview,
“Well, the more important point is that the public would have 50% representation on every major AI company. That’s the more important point, actually. And that means that when Mr. Musk and Mr. Bezos and these billionaires who now control the industry want to do something that will be harmful to the American people, the 50% of the people representing the public will say, Sorry, you can’t do that. And we have got to work to make sure that AI and robotics work for all of us, not just to enrich people who are already incredibly wealthy and powerful.”
Sanders acknowledged the bill is unlikely to become law while Republicans control Congress but said he sees growing bipartisan recognition of the need to address AI’s consequences. He told reporters he has not discussed the legislation with the White House but is talking with other senators and that the bill would bar using the fund to bail out AI companies.
The proposal lands amid a broader debate in Washington over how the gains from AI should be distributed. President Donald Trump has said he is planning to meet with AI companies about the possibility of the federal government taking stakes in them, an idea Trump has floated in general terms as a way for the public to share in AI profits. OpenAI has separately proposed a “public wealth fund” that would give every citizen a stake in AI-driven growth, and Sanders said he has discussed the idea with OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman. Sen. Elizabeth Warren has also pushed her proposal to tax AI profits to support workers displaced by the technology.
But Sanders’ approach goes considerably further than those other proposals. Norway’s sovereign wealth fund is barred from owning more than 10% of any single public company, and U.S. state pension funds generally spread their holdings across many companies rather than taking large stakes in any one. Some analysts said a mandatory 50% transfer of ownership would face steep legal, political, and practical obstacles. Brad Gastwirth, global head of research at Circular Technology, told Newsweek the mechanism Sanders is proposing goes well beyond earlier sovereign-wealth-fund discussions and would likely draw fierce opposition from industry, investors, and many lawmakers, making passage in its current form highly unlikely.
The bill is also likely to draw criticism from free-market commentators who argue that handing the government large ownership stakes and board seats in private companies risks politicizing corporate decision-making, a concern some have raised by pointing to sovereign wealth funds in other countries that have been used to finance government priorities far removed from public dividends.
The legislation has not yet been assigned a bill number. Sanders’ office released the full text and a summary of the bill alongside Thursday’s announcement.
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