In June, Bernie Sanders, a U.S. senator from Vermont, wrote in the New York Times that he plans to introduce the American A.I. Sovereign Wealth Fund Act.
Sanders says this law would let the public own part of the biggest AI companies in the U.S. by creating a sovereign wealth fund funded by a one-time 50 percent tax, paid in company stock instead of profits.
If passed, the law would give the public a say in how AI develops.
The federal government would use its voting shares and equal board representation to stop decisions that could harm citizens and support policies that help them.
Sanders points out that AI is built on books, songs, art, journalism, code, research, videos, conversations, images, and ideas from many generations.
He quotes Sam Altman, who leads OpenAI, saying that AI models were trained on humanity's shared experience, knowledge, and learning.
AI models were trained on humanity's shared experience, knowledge, and learning.
On X (previously Twitter), Steve Forbes, CEO of Forbes Media, expressed that government ownership of AI companies would blur the distinction between regulator and participant, skew incentives, and encourage political favoritism.
He argued that innovation flourishes in competitive markets rather than under government control or political involvement.
Clinton Donnelly, CEO of a Crypto company, noted that Bernie Sanders’ AI sovereign wealth fund promises to return money to Americans—supporting healthcare, housing, direct payments, and a better future for the average citizen.
However, he cautioned that Americans have heard similar promises before.
The risk is that a large government-controlled fund could turn into a slush fund, characterized by excessive funds, limited accountability, and strong political motivations.
For these reasons, Donnelly suggested the proposal should be viewed as a talking point rather than an economic strategy.
While it appears to benefit the average person, its design increases power, control, and opportunities for misuse.
In the Financial Times, Sam Altman argued that giving the public a financial stake in the company is the best way to share the benefits of AI.
The FT reports that OpenAI has suggested giving the federal government a 5 percent stake.
One social media user said that since the government has helped companies like Intel, which is important for making chips in the U.S., it makes sense for the government to own a stake in AI too, since it's both a big advantage and a national security risk.
Last week, OpenAI announced that they have designed and built its first AI chip: Jalapeño.
Designed from the ground up by OpenAI and brought to production with Broadcom, Jalapeño is purpose-built for the LLM workloads powering ChatGPT, Codex, the API, and future agentic products.
OpenAI said chips are foundational to the AI economy, so building their own expands a full-stack platform from products to models to infrastructure.
It will help scale intelligence, serve more people, and expand access to AI.
The Rundown AI, a newsletter that shares developments in artificial intelligence, posted a quote from Altman:
"Democratic institutions must not cede their responsibilities to AI labs. The labs develop the technology, but citizens and their elected representatives must make the rules."
The Rundown AI pointed out that with OpenAI valued at $852 billion, this would be about $43 billion in equity.
The proposal could also include other major U.S. labs, like Anthropic, Google, and Meta, each offering the same 5%.
According to the Financial Times, it's not clear if any of these companies would agree.
The equity would go into a fund similar to the Alaska Permanent Fund, which uses oil revenue to pay dividends to residents.
In May 2026, the Department of Commerce announced it had signed nine letters of intent to provide $2.013 billion in federal incentives under the CHIPS and Science Act.
The Commerce Department says these funds will support a group of quantum companies, including two U.S.-based quantum foundries and seven quantum computing companies.
The goal is to help solve key technology challenges in building large, reliable quantum computers.
Quantum computing could have a big impact on national defense, new materials, drug discovery, financial modeling, and energy systems.
Building a strong U.S. quantum industry is important for national security, technological strength, and long-term leadership.
The Department of Commerce is proposing to provide incentives for two quantum foundries (GlobalFoundries and IBM) to help establish and accelerate foundational domestic manufacturing capacity for the quantum sector.
- GlobalFoundries will receive $375 million in planned funding to establish a secure, domestic quantum foundry for leading architectures and multiple modalities (superconducting, trapped ion, photonic, topological, and silicon spin) used in large-scale quantum computers.
- IBM will receive $1 billion in planned funding to establish a new quantum foundry subsidiary for quantum-grade superconducting wafers by building on its U.S. leadership in superconducting quantum wafer fabrication technology.
The quantum portfolio covers several types of technology and tackles specific technical problems.
The structure of the Department of Commerce’s proposed incentives is intended to provide capital toward an initial portfolio of 7 companies that will address the most consequential, unresolved engineering problems in multiple quantum modalities.
Atom Computing will receive $100 million in planned funding to address key technical and manufacturing challenges for neutr
The Department of Commerce’s proposed incentives are meant to give funding to seven companies that will work on the most important and unsolved engineering problems in different areas of quantum technology.
- D-Wave will receive $100 million in planned funding for critical advancements in annealing and gate-model superconducting quantum computing systems, including qubit counts, error rates, and coherence through advanced dielectric material optimization, interface control, and high-density advanced packaging.
- Infleqtion will receive $100 million in planned funding to develop the underlying engineering systems and integration requirements for large-scale neutral-atom-based quantum computers and architectures, including high-powered optical systems and novel readout and error-correction systems.
- PsiQuantum will receive $100 million in planned funding to address key technical challenges in photonic quantum computing, including mature, high-performance electro-optic materials, high-temperature single-photon detectors, and ultra-low-loss photonic packaging.
- Quantinuum will receive $100 million in planned funding to address critical technology and manufacturing bottlenecks for scaling of fault-tolerant trapped-ion-based quantum computers, such as low-loss integrated photonics and reliable optical components at trapped-ion critical wavelengths.
- Rigetti will receive up to $100 million in planned funding to address key technical challenges in developing and scaling next-generation superconducting quantum computing technologies and architectures, such as miniaturizing and integrating novel readout electronics and next-generation cryostat architectures.
The Department will get a small, non-controlling ownership share in each company as a condition for funding, to help increase returns for U.S. taxpayers.