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A majority of U.S. workers want companies to be held more accountable through an AI sovereign wealth fund because they are unhappy about a growing number of layoffs in the tech industry despite higher overall corporate profits, according to a recent survey.
Research firm Verasight’s nationwide survey of 1,690 adults, conducted in June and released earlier this month, suggests that 69% of Americans now support “forcing” AI firms to transfer 50% of their shares to a public sovereign wealth fund.
“In the eyes of the public, AI sovereign wealth funds are seen as a tool to return the profits of the AI industry to broader society,” said Benjamin Leff, CEO of Verasight.
In June, Senator Bernie Sanders proposed the American AI Sovereign Wealth Fund Act, which, if passed, would give the public a 50% stake in the largest AI companies in the US
“It would guarantee that the economic benefits generated by AI are used to improve the lives of all of us — not just to make the world’s richest people even richer,” Sanders said in a statement last month.
“The future of AI and the fate of humanity cannot be decided behind closed doors in Silicon Valley by billionaires looking to maximize their power and profits,” Sanders said.
The increasing number of tech layoffs in the US has left many workers frustrated and worried about job security as companies continue to increase their capital spending on AI expansion.
Joseph Briggs, senior global economist at Goldman Sachs, estimates that more than 9% of the workforce, or around 15 million workers, could lose their jobs during a 10-year AI transition period, the bank said in a report released last month.
This “would be the type of automation and redistribution shock that we saw in the late 1990s and early 2000s and other periods of significant technological change,” Briggs said.
“But [Briggs] believes these losses will prove temporary because he expects AI to create many new jobs in the long term, even as it eliminates existing ones,” the Goldman Sachs report said.
Sovereign wealth funds can play multiple roles when it comes to AI. According to research firm Windfall Trust, they can lead the development of AI at the national level by funding capital-intensive AI infrastructure, taking equity stakes in AI companies, and reaping a share of AI-driven economic gains for the national treasury.
However, sovereign wealth funds could also face challenges in navigating the public good and the global race to build AI capabilities.
“There is also a tension between the financial mission (maximizing returns for citizens) and the strategic mission (building national AI capabilities, maintaining influence over border systems), as these goals can come into conflict when the best financial investment is a foreign AI company rather than a domestic one,” Windfall Trust added.
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https://www.cnbc.com/2026/07/12/majority-of-us-workers-support-ai-fund-amid-tech-layoffs-survey.html
