U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders announced on Tuesday, plans to introduce a bill that would allow a one-time 50% stock tax on the nation’s largest artificial intelligence firms, arguing that the industry was built on “stolen” public data and its massive financial gains must be shared with the American people.
The senator detailed his proposal in a video on X explaining the intention behind the introduction of the new bill and named it the American A.I. Sovereign Wealth Fund Act. Under this plan, the tech giants would pay the tax not in cash or profits, but through corporate shares. The collective equity would establish a national sovereign wealth fund, mirroring models like Norway’s oil fund and the Alaska Permanent Fund, to finance public assets like healthcare, education, and housing while providing direct cash payments to citizens.
READ: Bernie Sanders and Ron DeSantis voice concerns over AI (January 5, 2026)
Sanders explicitly mentioned industry giants like OpenAI, Anthropic, and xAI, asserting that tech billionaires have scraped humanity’s collective knowledge, creativity, and labor without permission or compensation. By converting this data into proprietary algorithms, he argued, a small group of executives are poised to monopolize trillions of dollars while leaving everyday working families behind. He noted that even OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has previously acknowledged that AI models are trained on the collective experience of humanity.
Beyond redistributing wealth, the proposed legislation seeks to shift industry governance. The federal government would command equal representation on the boards of major AI developers and hold voting shares. Sanders stated this mechanism is intended to give the public a voice in business strategies, allowing the government to block corporate decisions that could harm workers or the public.
Sanders goes on to explain that the fear of AI being smarter than humans is very real and the possibility of AI functioning independently causing catastrophic consequences in the future is very high, and states that AI will eventually change the world, but the question is who will benefit from it and who will get hurt by it.
He pointed out that versions of this idea have emerged from within the AI industry itself, referencing to past statements by Altman and other tech giants regarding a public wealth fund and Anthropic’s calls for national sovereign wealth funds holding AI equity.
READ: Bernie Sanders slams billionaires, warns of growing American oligarchy (January 24, 2025)
The proposal comes at a time when industry leaders prepare for significant financial payouts, with Anthropic, OpenAI, and xAI (which recently merged with SpaceX) positioning for public offerings. However, the scope of the legislation remains undefined for tech giants like Microsoft, Google, and Amazon, where AI constitutes only a portion of their broader business operations. Critics have also noted that while Sanders frames AI as a product of global knowledge, his sovereign wealth fund would exclusively benefit American citizens.
Despite potential hurdles, Sanders maintains that aggressive intervention is necessary to prevent a dystopian economic shift. With widespread prediction of job displacement from automation, the senator says that that the federal government must secure a structural stake in the technology before a handful of Silicon Valley oligarchs lock in total control over the future of human labor.