A majority of Americans support giving the public a direct ownership stake in the country’s largest artificial intelligence companies, reflecting growing concerns that the economic benefits of the AI boom are becoming concentrated among a handful of technology firms while workers bear the costs of job displacement.
A new national survey by research firm Verasight found that 69% of Americans support requiring AI companies to transfer 50% of their stock into a public sovereign wealth fund, an idea that has gained attention as the industry pours hundreds of billions of dollars into AI infrastructure while continuing to cut jobs.
The poll, conducted in June among 1,690 U.S. adults and published earlier this month, highlights rising public unease over how AI-generated wealth should be distributed. It comes amid a wave of technology sector layoffs, record corporate profits and mounting debate in Washington over whether AI’s economic gains should accrue primarily to shareholders or be shared more broadly across society.
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The survey suggests that many Americans see AI not simply as another technological innovation but as a transformative industry whose benefits should be treated as a national asset.
Benjamin Leff, Chief Executive Officer of Verasight, said respondents broadly viewed an AI sovereign wealth fund as a mechanism for ensuring that the gains created by artificial intelligence extend beyond technology executives and investors.
“In the eyes of the public, AI Sovereign funds are seen as a tool to distribute the gains from the AI industry back to broader society,” he said.
The proposal reveals a growing policy discussion around “social ownership” of AI, with advocates arguing that because AI could fundamentally reshape labor markets and productivity, ordinary citizens should receive a direct financial stake in the industry’s success.
The findings come weeks after Senator Bernie Sanders introduced the American AI Sovereign Wealth Fund Act, legislation that would require the largest U.S. AI companies to transfer 50% of their equity into a publicly owned investment fund.
Under Sanders’ proposal, Americans would collectively own a substantial share of the country’s biggest AI developers, allowing the public to benefit financially as the companies grow.
Announcing the legislation last month, Sanders argued that AI should improve living standards rather than increase the wealth of technology billionaires.
“It would guarantee that the economic benefits generated by AI are used to improve the lives of all of us — not simply to make the richest people in the world even richer,” he said.
He also warned against allowing the future of artificial intelligence to be shaped solely by private corporations.
“The future of AI and the fate of humanity must not be decided behind closed doors in Silicon Valley by billionaires seeking to maximize their power and profit,” the senator added.
The proposal is regarded as one of the most ambitious efforts yet to reshape ownership of the AI economy and would fundamentally alter the capital structure of America’s largest artificial intelligence companies if enacted.
Layoffs Fuel Public Frustration
The growing support for public ownership comes as technology companies continue to reduce headcount while simultaneously accelerating investment in AI infrastructure. Many of the industry’s largest firms have announced repeated rounds of layoffs over the past two years, even as they commit unprecedented sums to data centers, semiconductor procurement and AI model development.
That contrast has intensified workers’ concerns that artificial intelligence is increasingly replacing existing roles while creating fewer immediate employment opportunities than previous technological revolutions. The issue has become particularly sensitive as companies report stronger earnings, buoyed in part by productivity gains associated with AI adoption.
Goldman Sachs Sees Significant Labor Disruption
Economists continue to debate the long-term employment effects of artificial intelligence. According to a report published last month by Goldman Sachs, Senior Global Economist Joseph Briggs estimates that more than 9% of the U.S. labor force, equivalent to roughly 15 million workers, could lose their jobs during a decade-long transition driven by AI.
Briggs compared the expected disruption to previous periods of rapid technological transformation.
“This would be the type of automation and reallocation shock that we saw in the late ’90s and early 2000s and in other periods of significant technological change,” he said.
However, Goldman Sachs argues that the disruption is unlikely to be permanent.
According to the report, “these losses will prove temporary owing to his expectation that AI will create many new jobs over the long term even as it destroys existing ones.”
That assessment lends credence to a widely held view among economists that while AI will eliminate some occupations, it will also generate demand for entirely new categories of work that do not yet exist.
The concept of an AI sovereign wealth fund extends beyond redistributing corporate ownership.
According to research by Windfall Trust, such funds could play several strategic roles, including financing expensive AI infrastructure projects, investing directly in domestic AI companies, and ensuring that governments capture part of the economic value generated by artificial intelligence. Rather than relying solely on taxation, sovereign wealth funds would allow citizens to benefit directly through long-term equity ownership as AI companies grow.
The model mirrors how several resource-rich countries, including Norway, have used sovereign wealth funds to convert national assets into long-term public wealth.
Applied to AI, advocates argue that data, computing infrastructure, and technological innovation could become similarly valuable national assets.
Researchers caution, however, that sovereign wealth funds would face difficult trade-offs. Windfall Trust noted that governments could struggle to balance their responsibility to maximize financial returns with broader strategic objectives such as strengthening domestic AI capabilities and maintaining technological leadership.
The research firm warned: “There is also a tension between the financial mandate (maximize returns for citizens) and the strategic mandate (build national AI capacity, maintain influence over frontier systems), since these objectives can conflict when the best financial investment is a foreign AI company rather than a domestic one.”
Overall, support for an AI sovereign wealth fund suggests that many Americans are becoming more receptive to policies that spread AI-generated wealth more broadly, particularly as concerns grow over automation, job security and widening income inequality.