Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) introduced the American AI Sovereign Wealth Fund Act on Thursday, proposing a one-time 50% stock tax on AI companies with more than $200 million in annual sales and transferring the shares into a federally managed fund Sanders pegs at roughly $7 trillion. A 5% annual dividend on the fund’s average market value would be appropriated each year, yielding what Sanders estimates as more than $1,000 per American.

The mechanics matter. Shares are paid in stock, not cash, and the fund is barred from selling them, which converts the intervention from a tax-and-spend into a permanent public equity claim. A seven-member Independent Commission for Democratic AI, nominated by the president from a bipartisan congressional list and confirmed by the Senate, would govern it. Companies running mixed AI and non-AI lines would’ve to undertake structural separation so only the AI business is taxed. Anti-offshoring rules are included. Fund money can’t be used to bail out AI companies.

What’s politically strange is that the underlying idea isn’t fringe inside the Trump administration. President Trump has floated a federal equity stake in AI firms without specifying its size. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick backs a sovereign-wealth approach, per Semafor; Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent prefers funneling equity into Trump Accounts. OpenAI’s Sam Altman and Anthropic’s Dario Amodei have separately endorsed public-wealth mechanisms tied to AI gains, a posture Sanders dismissed as billionaires trying to “buy off the public.”

Sanders has no cosponsors yet and says he hasn’t spoken to the White House. The bill won’t advance under Republican control. He plans to make AI ownership a centerpiece of his midterm campaigning, which is the actual function of the legislation: a price tag and a dividend number that can survive contact with a stump speech long after the text dies in committee.

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