69% of Americans back public ownership of big AI firms

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TL;DR<br>A Verasight survey of 1,690 US adults found 69% support forcing AI companies to transfer 50% of their stock to a public sovereign wealth fund, the policy at the heart of Bernie Sanders’s American AI Sovereign Wealth Fund Act. The shift tracks a labour market where tech made up nearly a third of US layoffs in H1 2026 while the same firms raised AI capex. The article presents the counterarguments too: property-rights objections, chilled investment, disputed displacement forecasts, and survey-wording effects.

An idea that sounded radical a year ago is now a majority position. Nearly seven in ten Americans support forcing AI companies to transfer half their stock to a public sovereign wealth fund, CNBC reports.

The figure comes from a Verasight survey of 1,690 US adults, conducted in June. It found 69% backing for the policy.

The public sees such funds as a way to route the gains of the AI industry back to society, Verasight chief executive Benjamin Leff said. That framing is doing a lot of work.

Where the idea came from

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The proposal is not hypothetical. Senator Bernie Sanders introduced the American AI Sovereign Wealth Fund Act in June, which would hand the public a 50% stake in the largest US AI firms.

Sanders has pitched it as a roughly $7 trillion fund. The argument is that the public paid for the research and the infrastructure, so the public should share the returns.

He is not alone in the direction of travel. Senator Ed Markey’s recent AI Accountability Agenda lists “sharing the AI wealth” among its six priorities.

Why the mood shifted

The context is a labour market that keeps absorbing bad news. Tech accounted for close to a third of US layoffs in the first half of 2026, and AI is increasingly named as the reason.

The projections are grimmer still. Goldman Sachs economist Joseph Briggs has estimated more than 9% of the labour force, around 15 million workers, could lose jobs across a decade-long AI transition.

Meanwhile the same companies doing the cutting are raising their AI capital spending. That juxtaposition, layoffs alongside record investment, is what makes the ownership argument land.

The human cost is not evenly distributed either, as TNW has written on the people left behind by tech layoffs and AI hype. Polling captures the resentment better than it captures the remedy.

The case against

Critics see a forced transfer of private property dressed up as a dividend. Seizing half of a company’s equity, on this view, would chill investment and drive AI development offshore.

There is also a question about the premise. Sam Altman has argued an AI jobs apocalypse is unlikely, and if he is right, a policy built on mass displacement is solving the wrong problem.

The survey wording matters too. Asking whether firms should be “forced” to transfer stock invites a different answer than asking about the trade-offs, and pollsters have long known that abstract redistribution polls better than its specifics.

Where it goes

Other countries are already reaching for blunter tools. Chinese courts have ruled that replacing a worker with AI is not lawful grounds for firing them, a protection with no US or EU equivalent.

Sanders’s bill will not pass this Congress. But the polling suggests the question is no longer whether the public gets a claim on AI’s upside, only what form the claim takes.

That is a meaningful shift in the Overton window. The industry spent years arguing about whether AI would take jobs, and voters have quietly moved on to arguing about the bill.

Story by

Ana-Maria Stanciuc

Editor-in-Chief

I am the Editor in Chief for TNW, covering technology not as a parade of launches and valuations, but as a system of influence, persuasion,

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I am the Editor in Chief for TNW, covering technology not as a parade of launches and valuations, but as a system of influence, persuasion, and change. I write about startups, venture capital, digital policy, and Europe ecosystem, with an eye on the larger story beneath them: who gets to build the future, who profits from it, and how Europe is learning to speak in a louder voice of its own. Before moving into senior editorial leadership, I've built my career for over +10 years across journalism, storytelling, content strategy, SEO, and digital publishing, with experience in SaaS, hospitality, art, and culture.

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