WASHINGTON — Sen. Bernie Sanders on Wednesday unveiled legislation that would create a nearly $7 trillion sovereign wealth fund financed through a one-time 50% tax on the largest artificial intelligence companies, with proceeds directed as direct payments to Americans and funding for health care, education, and housing programs.
The bill, shown first to the Associated Press, represents one of the most aggressive proposals by a member of Congress to redirect concentrated wealth from the rapidly growing AI sector to the public. It would establish an independent commission to oversee the fund and distribute its returns.
“The benefits cannot simply go to the handful of wealthy corporations,” the independent Vermont senator said in an interview Wednesday. “They will be shared by the American people.”
The legislation lands as AI companies race toward trillion-dollar valuations and blockbuster initial public offerings. The sector has drawn intensifying scrutiny from lawmakers across the political spectrum, with a growing number of proposals in Congress targeting everything from data center regulation to military use of AI to public investment structures.
Sanders’ plan is the most direct redistributive proposal to date. By taxing the equity of the largest AI firms at 50% in a single assessment, the bill would create a fund Sanders estimates at nearly $7 trillion — enough to generate hundreds of billions of dollars annually in returns for public programs, he said.
The independent commission that would oversee the fund is designed to operate at arm’s length from political control, similar in structure to existing sovereign wealth funds in other countries. The fund would make annual distributions to American households and fund federal programs in health care, education, and housing.
Sanders has long argued that technological revolutions have disproportionately enriched a small class of investors and executives while ordinary workers bear the costs of disruption. The AI sector, he said, should not be an exception. He has previously clashed with California Gov. Gavin Newsom over a proposal to tax billionaires to fund AI-related public programs.
The bill is likely to face steep opposition from the AI industry and its allies in Congress. Technology executives including OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei have warned that heavy-handed regulation could push AI development overseas. Leading AI companies are moving toward blockbuster IPOs that would value some firms in the hundreds of billions of dollars, further concentrating ownership among venture capital firms and early investors.
Several Democratic lawmakers have introduced AI-related bills this year. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and New York state Assembly member Alex Bores have proposed legislation addressing data center energy use, while Rep. Adam Schiff of California has introduced a bill restricting Pentagon use of AI. A March proposal co-sponsored by progressive lawmakers would impose a nationwide moratorium on new AI data center construction.
The Sanders plan goes further than any of those bills in its attempt to redirect AI-generated wealth to the public. It draws on the sovereign wealth model used by countries including Norway, which built a vast fund from oil revenues, and Canada, which announced an $18 billion sovereign wealth fund in April.
The bill is expected to be referred to the Senate Finance Committee. Its prospects in a divided Congress are uncertain.