Bernie’s AI Power Grab Stuns Silicon Valley

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bingeworthynews.com — A new Bernie Sanders plan to seize half the stock of leading artificial intelligence companies is testing just how far Washington is willing to go in using government power to reshape the economy.

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Bernie Sanders proposes a one-time 50% tax paid in stock that would hand the federal government half of major artificial intelligence firms.^[1]^[3]
The plan would create a government-run “sovereign wealth fund” with voting shares and board seats in companies like OpenAI, Anthropic, and xAI.^[1]^[2]
Supporters frame it as “shared prosperity”; critics see an unprecedented step toward nationalizing strategic technology.^[1]^[2]
Sanders’s broader record on “robot taxes” and heavy Wall Street levies shows this is part of a wider push for aggressive government control over capital and innovation.^[2]

Sanders’s 50% AI Stock Tax: How the Proposal Would Work

Senator Bernie Sanders has announced plans for the American AI Sovereign Wealth Fund Act, a bill that would impose a one-time 50 percent tax on major artificial intelligence companies, paid not in cash but in stock.^[1]^[2]^[3] Under the proposal, the federal government would acquire roughly half of the equity in targeted firms such as OpenAI, Anthropic, xAI, and other large artificial intelligence developers, placing those shares into a national sovereign wealth fund that claims to represent the American public.^[1]^[2] Sanders has promoted this plan in a New York Times opinion article and video statements, arguing that artificial intelligence has been built on the “accumulated knowledge, creativity, and labor of all of humanity” and therefore should be treated as a public resource whose gains must be shared broadly.^[1]^[3]

Supporters of the plan describe two primary goals: first, to give ordinary Americans a direct financial stake in the future profits of leading artificial intelligence companies, and second, to give the public a formal voice in how this powerful technology is developed.^[1]^[2]^[3] Sanders says the government-held shares would come with voting rights and board representation, allowing officials to influence corporate decisions and limit what he calls “big tech oligarchs.”^[1]^[2] He further claims that the sovereign wealth fund could generate “billions, if not trillions,” to finance direct payments to citizens and expanded spending on health care, education, and housing, effectively using artificial intelligence profits to underwrite new entitlements.^[1]^[2]^[3]

From Robot Taxes to Wall Street Levies: A Pattern of Heavy Government Intervention

The 50 percent stock tax does not stand alone; it fits into a long-standing Sanders approach that consistently favors aggressive taxation and government direction of private capital. In earlier proposals, Sanders called for a broad “robot tax” on companies that use artificial intelligence and automation, claiming it would protect workers from job losses and fund social programs.^[2] He has also backed a steep financial transactions tax on stock, bond, and derivatives trades, with the Tax Policy Center noting it would raise costs for investors, reduce trading volumes, and likely push activity to other markets. Analysts from the Urban Institute and Brookings Institution concluded that Sanders’s wider tax agenda would raise taxes on work, saving, and investment at levels beyond recent United States experience, with effects felt across all income groups.

Sanders’s own Senate report on artificial intelligence and automation goes further, calling for mandated worker ownership stakes, sweeping changes to the tax code to end what he views as subsidies for automation, and new levies targeted at technologies that replace human labor. Critics argue that the 50 percent artificial intelligence stock tax is simply the next escalation in this pattern: a shift from taxing profits and trades to forcibly transferring ownership itself, while entrenching the federal government as a permanent shareholder in cutting-edge technology companies.^[1]^[2] While Sanders frames this as a way to democratize artificial intelligence and rein in billionaire power, opponents see a centralizing model in which Washington, D.C. uses taxation tools to steer entire sectors of the economy, from Wall Street to Silicon Valley.^[1]^[2]

Nationalization by Another Name? Risks to Innovation, Liberty, and Competitiveness

Policy analysts note that a compulsory transfer of half a company’s equity, coupled with voting rights and board seats for the federal government, would be one of the most far-reaching interventions in the history of the American technology industry.^[2]^[3] Even without using the word “nationalization,” the structure effectively makes Washington a co-owner and co-governor of private firms that drive innovation, defense-related research, and economic growth.^[1]^[2]^[3] Critics warn that such a move could chill investment, alter how board members make decisions, and inject political priorities into technical choices about product design, data use, and research direction in artificial intelligence.^[3]

I hate to say this, but… Bernie Sanders is RIGHT.

Okay, half right. Half INCREDIBLY WRONG.

His 'American A.I. Sovereign Wealth Fund Act' would tax major AI companies 50% of their stock. So the government would OWN half these companies because they were built using YOUR data.… pic.twitter.com/Bw5bG3Pbht

— Glenn Beck (@glennbeck) June 2, 2026

Available research on Sanders’s broader tax plans suggests that heavy, targeted levies on capital often change behavior in ways that reduce economic activity, with prior analysis of his financial transactions tax predicting lower trading and some flight to other markets. Opponents argue that imposing a one-time 50 percent equity tax on frontier artificial intelligence firms risks similar distortions at a moment when the United States is in direct competition with China and other rivals over advanced technology.^[2]^[3] However, existing sources have not yet produced company balance sheets or formal modeling that quantify exactly how this specific stock transfer would impact hiring, research and development budgets, or long-term innovation, leaving some of the economic concerns grounded more in inference from past tax debates than in firm-level data.^[1]^[2]