The people building AI and the people who want to tax it are converging on the same idea.
Bernie Sanders has introduced a $7 trillion AI sovereign wealth fund. OpenAI has floated a "Public Wealth Fund." Anthropic has called for national sovereign wealth funds. Trump signed a February 2025 executive order for a US sovereign wealth fund. This is the plainspoken, sourced record of every real proposal to share AI's gains, with statuses that tell the truth.
Proposes public ownership of 50% of large AI companies via a Treasury-held sovereign wealth fund.
OpenAI
Has proposed a "Public Wealth Fund" holding a stake in AI. Altman sketched the precursor in his 2021 essay.
Anthropic
Has called for the creation of national sovereign wealth funds tied to AI.
Elon Musk
Has repeatedly predicted AI-driven job loss will require universal income, "universal high income."
President Trump
Signed a February 2025 executive order directing the creation of a US sovereign wealth fund.
The lineage
From a 1797 pamphlet to 2026 bill text: the same idea, tracked across two and a quarter centuries.
1797
Thomas Paine, Agrarian Justice: a citizen's dividend funded by a tax on land, the founding document of the whole idea.
1982
Alaska Permanent Fund pays its first dividend. Every eligible Alaskan has received an annual check from oil wealth since. It is still the model every AI fund cites.
2017
Bill Gates argues the robot replacing a $50,000 worker should be taxed similarly. The European Parliament votes the idea down the same month Korea preps its credit cuts.
2019
Andrew Yang's Freedom Dividend ($1,000/month via a VAT) puts UBI on a debate stage; his data dividend proposes paying people for the data that trains AI.
2021
Sam Altman's "Moore's Law for Everything" proposes the American Equity Fund: tax companies in shares, distribute to citizens.
2024
The largest US cash-transfer study (OpenResearch, funded by Altman) publishes results. California's CalUBI bill dies quietly.
2026 You are here.
Sanders introduces the $7T American AI Sovereign Wealth Fund Act. The idea completes its journey from pamphlet to bill text.
The ledger
Eight proposals. And their status.
Enacted: passed into law or policyIntroduced: formal bill filed, pendingFloated: proposed, no bill textRejected: voted down or removedDead: stalled or withdrawn
Featured · The News Peg
AT-001Introduced · Jun 18 2026
USA · Federal · Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT)
American AI Sovereign Wealth Fund Act
"Instead of taxing AI profits, take half the stock."
A one-time 50% tax, paid in stock (not cash), on companies with more than $200 million in annual AI-related gross receipts. Shares are deposited into a Treasury-held sovereign wealth fund managed by a new seven-member Independent Commission for Democratic AI. Sanders estimates roughly $7 trillion in initial fund assets, with 5% distributed annually: direct payments of at least $1,000 per person plus health, education, and housing funding over time.
Reality check: No committee action, no Republican cosponsors, no path in this Congress. Treat it as the opening bid in a negotiation that hasn't started, and a preview of the 2028 platform fights.
"If a robot takes the job, the robot's owner pays the payroll tax."
A Senate HELP Committee report from Sanders projecting AI could eliminate nearly 100 million US jobs over a decade, proposing a robot tax on large corporations that replace workers with AI, with revenue directed to affected workers.
Reality check: A report, not a bill, but it set the table for AT-001 a year later. The idea has bipartisan-adjacent history: Bill Gates endorsed a robot tax back in 2017.
"Prove a robot took your job, get $1,000 a month for a year."
Would have created the California Unconditional Benefit Income (CalUBI) Pilot: $1,000/month for 12 months to workers determined by the EDD to be unemployed because of automation or AI, after exhausting unemployment benefits. Funded by legislative appropriation, not an employer levy. Introduced Feb 2024; first committee hearing canceled at the author's request, April 2024.
Reality check: Died before its first hearing, canceled by its own author. But it's the template: expect the "AI unemployment insurance" framing to return in Sacramento.
Guaranteed Income Pilot Program Act of 2025 (H.R. 5830)
"A national experiment to find out what monthly cash actually does, before AI forces the question."
A nationwide three-year federal pilot providing guaranteed monthly payments pegged to fair-market rent for a two-bedroom home in each participant's zip code, authorizing roughly $495 million annually for five years. The 2025 reintroduction explicitly cites increasing automation and AI.
Reality check: This is the fourth reintroduction since 2020. It has cosponsors, endorsements, and no floor vote in sight. Its real function is keeping federal pilot infrastructure drafted and ready.
"The one place that actually tried it, and robot purchases dropped by more than a quarter."
Korea trimmed its tax credits for corporate automation investment (larger firms saw the deepest cuts; only small firms kept the full benefit). Not a direct tax on robots, but a reduction in the subsidy for buying them, widely described as the world's first robot tax. After the credit cut, affected Korean industries reduced industrial robot installations by roughly 28% relative to Japanese counterparts, per research using administrative tax data. Firms shifted some investment toward employment; the reform also slowed wage growth at the top.
Reality check: The only real-world natural experiment on the entire page. Whatever your priors, this is the evidence everyone else is arguing without.
Round Two: AI Levy Talk & the Future Response Fund
"Tax the boom while it's booming; argue about the robot tax later."
President Lee Jae Myung, before taking office, argued that if AI destroys jobs, "purchasing power must be preserved," floating a levy on AI and robots. Separately, Seoul is standing up a Future Response Fund built from windfall tax revenue from the AI chip boom, as a strategic investment platform.
Reality check: The Bank of Korea and business groups are pushing back hard on any direct levy. The chip-windfall fund is the version actually moving.
"Europe considered this a decade before it was cool, and voted no."
The Parliament's Legal Affairs Committee (Delvaux report) proposed that a basic income or worker assistance could be financed by a tax on robot labor, with corporate reporting on automation's share of economic results. The full Parliament stripped the tax and basic-income provisions from its 2017 robotics resolution.
Reality check: Important myth-buster: the EU AI Act (2024) regulates AI safety and contains zero tax provisions. Anyone telling you Brussels has an AI levy in the works is ahead of the facts.
No bill and no formal consultation exists. What does: YouGov polling showing 47% of Britons would back an AI tax versus 20% opposed, and former Cabinet Secretary Lord Gus O'Donnell publicly arguing that AI-driven tax gains should fund mass retraining of displaced workers.
Reality check: Cross-party support (even Tory voters net-positive) with no legislative vehicle is exactly the condition under which a Treasury eventually moves. Watch the next Budget cycle.
Guaranteed income has actually been tested. Here's what happened when three real programs put monthly cash in people's hands.
SEEDStockton · 2019–21
Stockton SEED
$500/month to 125 residents, no strings. Full-time employment rose faster among recipients than the control group; recipients reported lower anxiety and depression.
$1,000/month for three years to 1,000 lower-income recipients, the largest US study to date. Found increased spending on essentials and greater flexibility; recipients worked modestly less (roughly an hour per week); no significant improvements on most measured health outcomes.
Guaranteed income recipients reduced household spending and earned income, because they prioritized paying down high-interest debt, improving long-term balance sheets. The counterintuitive one.
Cash does something. It's just rarely what either side predicted.
Compare
Two proposals, side by side. Change either dropdown.
Serial
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Revenue and scale figures are sponsors' estimates unless a source says otherwise. Statuses verified July 2026.
Go deeper: Scott Santens
Santens has been writing about basic income full-time since 2013 — long before the AI companies came around to the idea. These essays cover the mechanics behind every proposal on this page.
A robot tax is a colloquial umbrella for any levy on replacing workers with automation. Formal designs vary: direct levies, payroll-equivalent taxes, or simply cutting subsidies for automation investment, as South Korea did.
Has any country actually taxed automation?
Yes, sort of. South Korea trimmed its tax credits for corporate automation investment effective 2018. Research using administrative tax data found affected industries reduced industrial robot installations by roughly 28% relative to Japanese counterparts.
What is the Sanders AI Sovereign Wealth Fund Act?
A bill introduced by Sen. Bernie Sanders on June 18, 2026 proposing a one-time 50% tax paid in stock on companies with more than $200 million in annual AI-related gross receipts, deposited into a Treasury-held sovereign wealth fund. It has no committee action and no Republican cosponsors.
Does the EU AI Act tax AI companies?
No. The EU AI Act of 2024 regulates AI safety and contains zero tax provisions. The European Parliament stripped the tax and basic-income provisions from its robotics resolution in February 2017.
What did the big UBI studies actually find?
Cash payments increased spending on essentials and reduced anxiety, while recipients worked modestly less and showed no significant improvement on most health outcomes. In Compton, recipients even reduced spending to pay down high-interest debt.
Why do AI companies support wealth-sharing proposals?
OpenAI has floated a Public Wealth Fund and Anthropic has called for national sovereign wealth funds, while Elon Musk predicts AI job loss will require universal income. They converge with critics like Sanders on the idea of sharing AI's gains, even as they disagree on nearly everything else.
Glossary
UBI vs. Guaranteed Income
UBI is universal and unconditional; guaranteed income targets a defined group (e.g., displaced workers). Nearly every "UBI" program in the US is actually guaranteed income. The distinction decides who's eligible and what it costs.
Robot Tax
Colloquial umbrella for any levy on replacing workers with automation. Formal designs vary: direct levies, payroll-equivalent taxes, or (as in Korea) simply cutting subsidies for automation investment.
Sovereign Wealth Fund
A state-owned investment fund. Norway's (oil) and Alaska's (oil) are the models; AI-era proposals swap the resource: instead of taxing barrels, take equity in AI firms.
Windfall / Equity Tax
A one-time tax on extraordinary gains, sometimes payable in stock rather than cash. The Sanders bill's core mechanism, and why it's structurally different from an income tax.
Data Dividend
Payment to individuals for personal data used to train AI systems. Treats data as a labor input deserving compensation; popularized by Andrew Yang.
Gross Receipts
Total money taken in from all sources, before expenses. Matters because most AI companies aren't profitable: taxing receipts (as the Sanders bill does) reaches companies a profit tax would miss.
Payroll Tax Equivalent
Applying the same effective tax to AI labor substitution as to human payroll, closing the arbitrage where firing a person and buying software cuts your tax bill.
Automation Displacement
Job loss caused by machines or software performing tasks previously done by workers. The harm every proposal on this page exists to address, and the number nobody can agree on.
