Trump and Sanders Align on Creating a U.S. AI Sovereign Wealth Fund via Equity Stakes
The push for public ownership of the artificial intelligence boom has escalated from theoretical policy debates into concrete corporate proposals and competing legislative frameworks. In July 2026, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman proposed a landmark deal to donate a 5% equity stake in the company—valued at approximately $42.6 billion based on its $852 billion March 2026 valuation—to a newly established U.S. sovereign wealth fund.1 The proposal, which would encourage other major AI laboratories to donate similar stakes, represents a strategic effort by OpenAI to secure stable relations with the Trump administration and ward off mounting political blowback.
This corporate offer directly collides with a far more aggressive legislative proposal introduced by Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) called the American AI Sovereign Wealth Fund Act. Sanders' bill proposes a one-time 50% tax on AI company stock for "systemically important" AI enterprises, with the collected shares flowing directly into a public wealth fund designed to distribute dividends to citizens. Under Sanders' proposal, conglomerates like Google and SpaceX would be permitted to spin off their non-AI business units to avoid the heavy levy.
OpenAI has increasingly detailed its own vision for a "Public Wealth Fund" in policy papers like "Industrial Policy for the Intelligence Age," advocating for a vehicle that directly distributes returns from AI-driven growth to all citizens to democratize the upside of the intelligence revolution.
"Returns from the Fund could be distributed directly to citizens, allowing more people to participate directly in the upside of AI-driven growth, regardless of their starting wealth or access to capital."
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An instance of Speculative pre-IPO perpetual assets allow public markets to price a unicorn before it lists. — Private tech giants leverage speculative multi-billion dollar valuations to structure massive corporate and public endowment proposals. ↩︎