Bernie Sanders AI sovereign wealth fund bill 2026
Key takeaways
- Bernie Sanders AI sovereign wealth fund bill 2026 Quartz · Tom Williams / Getty Images Cris Tolomia Thu, June 18, 2026 at 8:36 PM GMT+7 2 min read Sen.
- Every American would receive direct payments exceeding $1,000 annually, Sanders projects, drawn from a 5% dividend the fund would be required to distribute.
- "The benefits cannot simply go to the handful of wealthy corporations.
Bernie Sanders AI sovereign wealth fund bill 2026 Quartz · Tom Williams / Getty Images Cris Tolomia Thu, June 18, 2026 at 8:36 PM GMT+7 2 min read Sen. Bernie Sanders introduced legislation Thursday that would give the American public a direct 50% ownership stake in the country's largest artificial intelligence companies through a one-time tax on their stock.
Under the legislation, firms crossing the $200 million annual AI revenue threshold would be required to hand over half their shares to a new federally managed fund, The Associated Press reported, with Sanders pegging the total value of the resulting fund at approximately $7 trillion.
Oversight of the fund would fall to an independent, seven-person commission whose members would go through presidential nomination and Senate confirmation; that body would wield the fund's voting shares to push back against corporate actions seen as harmful to ordinary Americans, according to the senator. Every American would receive direct payments exceeding $1,000 annually, Sanders projects, drawn from a 5% dividend the fund would be required to distribute. Companies entering the AI sector and later hitting that revenue mark would face the same equity transfer requirement.