Sanders proposes AI wealth fund backed by 50% tax on big firms

Bernie Sanders is trying to turn the AI debate from regulation into a fight over ownership, asking who should capture the profits as machines reshape the economy. His bill would create an American A.I. Sovereign Wealth Fund Act, financed by a one-time 50% tax paid in stock by the largest AI companies once they reach $200 million in annual AI sales.

Sanders said the fund could ultimately be worth nearly $7 trillion and could generate hundreds of billions of dollars a year. The Vermont independent said the money would be used for direct payments to Americans, along with support for health care, education and housing. He argued that the point is to move AI wealth away from a narrow group of executives and investors and toward the public, saying Americans need “a significant seat at the table” so the technology helps people rather than harms them.

The plan would go beyond a simple tax. Sanders wants an independent seven-member commission to oversee the fund and use its voting shares to press companies toward policies that benefit the public and block decisions that do not. In practical terms, that would make the government not just a collector of revenue but a long-term owner with leverage over some of the most valuable companies in the country.

Sanders is leaning on familiar precedents to make the case. He has pointed to Alaska’s Permanent Fund, which has long distributed resource wealth directly to residents, and to public pension funds in the United States, which already hold hundreds of billions of dollars in stocks. In his Senate write-up, he also noted that Donald Trump has floated the idea of an American sovereign wealth fund in an executive order, putting an unlikely overlap around a concept that has gained attention from across the political spectrum.

The proposal lands as AI firms race toward trillion-dollar valuations and pour money into Washington lobbying while facing pressure over labor disruption and market concentration. Sanders has warned that AI and robotics could replace nearly 100 million jobs in the United States over the next decade, including large shares of nurses, truck drivers, accountants, teaching assistants and fast-food workers. OpenAI has also moved toward a more public-benefit-oriented structure, saying its nonprofit now controls the for-profit arm, now the OpenAI Foundation, and that its mission remains to ensure AGI benefits all humanity. The company said its for-profit entity will transition to a Public Benefit Corporation under nonprofit oversight, even as it reported a confidential draft S-1 submission to the SEC on June 8 and a June 10 cloud commitment with Oracle. Together, the developments show an industry scaling fast while the politics around who owns its gains are still unsettled.