Senator Bernie Sanders wants to hand American citizens a direct stake in the future of artificial intelligence—not through charity, but through legislation that would tax the stock of the largest AI companies. On June 1, 2026, Sanders wrote in the New York Times that the American A.I. Sovereign Wealth Fund Act could transform who owns and benefits from the technology reshaping human society.
The proposal arrives at a critical moment. AI is already reshaping economies, workforces, and daily life in ways that most people have barely begun to understand. Sanders frames the issue not as a question of whether AI will change the world, but who will control that change and who will benefit from it. That distinction matters enormously, because the stakes are genuinely high: the technology empowering modern AI systems was built, Sanders argues, on humanity's collective knowledge—books, songs, artwork, journalism, code, scientific research, videos, and ideas spanning generations. Yet the billionaires who commercialized these systems largely did so without permission, acknowledgment, or compensation to the creators whose work trained their models.
The American A.I. Sovereign Wealth Fund Act would work through a one-time 50 percent tax paid not in cash but in stock from the largest AI companies. This would give the federal government voting shares in firms like OpenAI, Anthropic, and xAI, along with equal board representation at each company. That government presence would allow policymakers to block decisions that harm citizens and push for policies that help them—a radical shift from the current model where a handful of tech executives make unilateral choices about technology affecting billions of people.
Sanders modeled the proposal on Norway's sovereign wealth fund, which has grown to enormous size by investing profits from oil revenues. If AI companies continue expanding as analysts predict, the wealth fund would grow alongside them, and the benefits would flow to ordinary Americans rather than concentrating among the world's richest people.
Interestingly, Sanders is not alone in recognizing the stakes. OpenAI itself has proposed a "public wealth fund that provides every citizen—including those not invested in financial markets—with a stake in AI driven economic growth." Anthropic has suggested "national sovereign wealth funds with stakes in AI." Even Elon Musk has called for "universal HIGH INCOME via checks issued by the Federal government" to address unemployment caused by AI. These proposals suggest that some of the industry's own leaders recognize the legitimacy of the public's claim to benefits from AI's enormous wealth-generating potential.
The central question Sanders raises remains unanswered: Will AI be used to make life better for working families and help eliminate poverty? Or will it simply enrich the billionaires who developed it? The American A.I. Sovereign Wealth Fund Act offers one concrete answer—one that would shift power away from a handful of tech oligarchs and toward democratic processes and ordinary citizens. Whether Congress will embrace it remains to be seen.