US senator Bernie Sanders wants the American people to take 50 percent stake in AI companies such as OpenAI and Anthropic.

Sanders, the independent senator for Vermont, has announced he will introduce the American AI Sovereign Wealth Fund Act, which he says is a bid to ensure that the large profits reaped by US AI companies benefit the wider population.

Under the proposal, outlined by Sanders in a video posted on social media, the bill would take the form of a one-time tax, paid not in cash but in shares. A 50 percent stake in the biggest AI companies would be deposited in a publicly owned account, giving the US government voting powers and the right to block decisions it considers harmful to citizens.

Any proceeds accrued as the publicly-owned shares grow in value would be transferred back to the American people in the form of one-off payments.

Sanders does not name the companies that would be impacted by the bill, but named-checked OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and xAI chief Elon Musk in an op-ed for the New York Times explaining his ideas.

“Artificial intelligence was not created out of thin air,” Sanders wrote. “The data and language used by generative AI tools didn’t just pop into Sam Altman’s head or Elon Musk’s imagination. AI is built on our collective intelligence: our books, songs, artwork, journalism, computer code, scientific research, videos, conversations, images, and ideas spanning generations.”

It is because of this, he argued, that the people who created the material used by AI systems should be rewarded.

“For the most part, tech oligarchs have fed this knowledge into their AI models without permission, without acknowledgment, without compensation,” Sanders said. “In other words, the creative work of millions of people — writers, artists, musicians, journalists, teachers, scientists, and ordinary citizens — has essentially been stolen by some of the wealthiest people in the world. It’s time for us to reclaim it.”

Sanders has become a vocal critic of AI and the data centers that power it. In March, he joined with Democratic senator Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to call for a nationwide moratorium on new data center developments in the US.

He first called for a nationwide pause on data center development in February, saying that "as the industry evolves, so must our policies."

The likelihood of this bill becoming law is remote at best, and given that the biggest AI companies sustain massive losses each month, the dividend payment element of the proposal would be unlikely to make anyone rich in the short term.

That said, Republican US President Donald Trump has shown a surprising willingness to pursue an agenda of public ownership of the nation’s biggest tech companies, taking a 10 percent stake in chipmaker Intel in August 2025. Last month, the US government took non-controlling equity in nine quantum computing firms in exchange for funding.