Sanders Pushes Government Stake in AI Giants

Senator Bernie Sanders wants the federal government to seize half the stock of America’s leading artificial intelligence companies — a radical government takeover that should alarm every free-market conservative.

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Sanders introduced the “American AI Sovereign Wealth Fund Act,” imposing a one-time 50% tax paid in company stock on major AI firms including OpenAI, Anthropic, and Elon Musk’s xAI.
The government would acquire voting shares and board seats in these private companies, giving Washington direct control over the AI industry’s most powerful players.
Sanders frames the scheme as returning AI’s wealth to the public, but critics see it as a massive government intervention into private enterprise with no clear legal foundation.
The proposal is part of a broader Sanders agenda that includes a “robot tax,” ending tax breaks for AI companies, and mandating worker ownership stakes in large businesses.

Sanders Proposes Taking Half of AI Giants’ Stock

Senator Bernie Sanders has announced plans to introduce legislation that would force the largest artificial intelligence companies in the United States to hand over half their equity to the federal government. The bill would impose a one-time 50% tax paid not in cash but in company stock, with the government receiving voting shares and board representation at firms like OpenAI, Anthropic, and xAI. Sanders outlined his vision in a New York Times op-ed accompanying the announcement. ^[1]

Sanders argues that artificial intelligence was built on society’s collective contributions — books, journalism, scientific research, creative work, and publicly funded technology — and that the trillions of dollars AI will generate should not flow exclusively to a handful of billionaires. His Senate office published a report titled “The Big Tech Oligarchs’ War Against Workers,” calling for sweeping intervention in the AI economy, including a robot tax, elimination of AI-related tax breaks, and requirements that large businesses give workers a substantial ownership stake. ^[5]

What Government Ownership of AI Would Actually Mean

The mechanics of this proposal deserve serious scrutiny. Under Sanders’s plan, the federal government would become a 50% equity owner in some of the most strategically sensitive technology companies in the world, holding voting shares and seats on their boards of directors. Washington bureaucrats would gain direct influence over product decisions, security policies, capital allocation, and hiring at firms that are currently at the cutting edge of a global technology race against China. ^[1] ^[8]

No draft bill text has been released, leaving critical questions unanswered: Which companies qualify as “major AI companies”? What valuation method determines how much stock changes hands? How would federal ownership affect these firms’ ability to raise private capital or attract top talent? The Urban Institute and Brookings Institution previously analyzed Sanders’s broader tax agenda and concluded his proposals would raise taxes on work, saving, and investment at rates beyond recent American historical experience. ^[7]

A Broader Pattern of Radical Redistribution

This proposal does not stand alone. Sanders’s Senate report pairs the stock-seizure plan with a separate “robot tax” targeting businesses that deploy AI and automation to replace workers. ^[2] The Tax Policy Center previously examined Sanders’s financial transactions tax and found that such levies tend to be passed on to investors and cause trading activity to decline and migrate elsewhere. ^[4] Applying that same logic to a compulsory 50% equity transfer raises obvious concerns about chilling investment in American AI development at a moment when global competition is intensifying.

For conservative Americans who have watched the federal government expand its reach into healthcare, energy, and education, Sanders’s AI plan represents the same instinct taken to a new extreme. The government has no demonstrated competence running technology companies, and injecting Washington into boardrooms at OpenAI or Anthropic would create conflicts between national security, commercial interests, and political agendas that no sovereign wealth fund structure can cleanly resolve. The proposal may never advance in a Republican-controlled Congress, but its introduction signals how aggressively the left intends to fight over who controls the most powerful technology of the 21st century. ^[3] ^[5]