U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders posted a video Monday outlining a striking idea: Americans should own half of large artificial intelligence companies.
As The Hill reported, in the nearly seven-minute video, the independent senator from Vermont said he plans to introduce legislation that would give the public a "direct ownership stake" in the enormous wealth AI could generate.
Sanders said he expects to formally introduce the AI Sovereign Wealth Fund Act "in the coming weeks," using a one-time 50% tax on stocks in major AI companies.
"The billions, if not trillions, generated by this legislation would provide direct payments to the American people and help guarantee health care, education, and housing as human rights," he said in the video, shared on social media.
Sanders also argues that AI has been built on "our collective human intelligence" and says the wealth it generates must benefit everyone, not just the richest people in the world.
OpenAI, Anthropic, and SpaceX are among the companies that could be in the bill's crosshairs. All of the companies are working toward public offerings later this year. Anthropic confirmed Monday that it had filed paperwork with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
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Sanders suggested that, under his proposal, the federal government would also receive voting shares, giving it a clear say in how these companies operate.
AI is already reshaping jobs, education, health care, and the broader economy, and the debate over who controls it — and who benefits — is growing more intense. The pitch from Sanders centers on frustration that a small number of executives and investors could capture the upside from tools built on vast amounts of public knowledge, labor, and infrastructure — while the general population feels the consequences.
AI depends on massive data centers that affect communities and face nationwide opposition. They strain the electric grid and often require huge amounts of water for cooling. That can raise concerns about higher utility bills, pressure on local resources, security risks, and environmental impacts.
Sanders has focused on that tension for months. As The Hill noted, he and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez introduced the Artificial Intelligence Data Center Moratorium Act in March, seeking to pause new data center construction pending protections for jobs, utility bills, and more.
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"The time has come to reclaim what was stolen from us," Sanders said in the video. "Since AI is built on the collective knowledge of humanity, the wealth it generates must benefit humanity, not just Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Larry Ellison, and other billionaires, or the venture capitalists and Wall Street firms who see AI as the next great wealth-extracting machine."
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