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Senator Bernie Sanders (D-VT) announced plans to introduce a bill forcing the largest AI companies to hand over a 50% ownership stake to the public.

Ripple Chief Technology Officer David Schwartz calls it an attack on freedom of speech.

Sanders announced the American AI Sovereign Wealth Fund Act on Tuesday, describing it as a one-time 50% tax not on profits but directly on stock.

The fund would give the American public a direct ownership stake in the largest AI companies and a say in how the technology develops.

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Bernie Sanders argued that collective human knowledge built AI, drawing on generations of books, songs, artwork, journalism, and scientific research.

“The creative work of millions and hundreds of millions of people has been stolen by the wealthiest people in the world,” he said.

“The time has come to reclaim what was stolen from us,” he added.

The bill would distribute trillions in potential AI wealth directly to the American people and fund healthcare, education, and housing.

Sanders pointed to Norway’s $2 trillion sovereign wealth fund and Alaska’s annual dividend payments from oil revenue as precedents, and noted that OpenAI, Anthropic, and even Elon Musk have proposed versions of public AI wealth distribution.

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Schwartz pushed back hard on X, framing the proposal not as an economic policy debate but as a fundamental threat to civil liberties.

“If something like this happened, it would be one of the worst attacks on freedom of speech in modern history by any country, if not the worst,” he posted, while acknowledging he expects the bill to go nowhere.

His reaction reflects broader tech industry alarm at the political direction around AI regulation.

The bill targets companies like OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google DeepMind at a moment when AI stocks are among the strongest performers in global markets.

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A 50% forced stock transfer from the largest AI companies would be the most aggressive government intervention in private enterprise since wartime.

While the bill faces long odds in Congress, its introduction adds political risk to AI names at a time when crypto is already competing with tech stocks for risk capital allocation.

Image: Shutterstock

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