A June survey of 1,690 U.S. adults found that 69% support forcing AI companies to transfer 50% of their stock to a public sovereign wealth fund, as tech-sector layoffs surpass 140,000 this year and AI is cited as the leading cause of job cuts.
A majority of American workers now support forcing AI companies to cede ownership stakes to a public fund, reflecting deepening anxiety over technology-driven job cuts that have already claimed more than 140,000 positions across the U.S. tech sector this year.
Sixty-nine percent of Americans support "forcing" AI firms to transfer 50% of their stock to a public sovereign wealth fund, according to a national survey of 1,690 adults conducted in June by research firm Verasight.
"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," said Benjamin Leff, chief executive officer of Verasight.
The poll arrives weeks after Senator Bernie Sanders introduced the American AI Sovereign Wealth Fund Act, which would grant the public a 50% stake in the largest AI companies operating in the United States. "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," Sanders said in a statement last month.
The legislative push comes amid mounting unease over a labor market being reshaped by AI adoption. The tech sector has shed roughly 140,000 jobs in the U.S. so far in 2026, more than any other industry, according to consulting firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas. AI was the primary reason companies cited for cuts for a fourth consecutive month, the firm said in a report last week, accounting for roughly 23% of all job-cut announcements this year.
May represented the sharpest month for tech layoffs since August 2024, with the pace easing somewhat in June.
Amazon has been among the most aggressive downsizers. The company has laid off more than 57,000 employees since 2022, or roughly 16% of its corporate workforce, and has accounted for approximately 13% of the industry's cuts this year, according to data from Layoffs.fyi. Its January round alone swept up roughly 16,000 employees, following a separate reduction of more than 14,000 workers three months prior — together marking the steepest cuts in the company's history.
CEO Andy Jassy has said AI "should change the way our work is done," and that efficiency gains from the technology "will reduce our total corporate workforce" in the years ahead. An Amazon spokesperson said the cuts were made to ensure the company can move fast and serve customers, while emphasizing that AI was not the reason for the vast majority of the layoffs.
Former Amazon employees describe a job market crowded with candidates. Courtney Haeflinger, who was laid off from Amazon Web Services in January, said job postings would attract 200 to 300 applicants almost immediately after going live. She spent months in front of her computer each morning scanning job boards before landing a role at AT&T last week. "It makes it harder for us as real job seekers to get in the door," she said. "It's frustrating."
Goldman Sachs Senior Global Economist Joseph Briggs estimates that more than 9% of the U.S. labor force — around 15 million workers — could lose their jobs during a 10-year AI transition period. Briggs described the potential displacement as "the type of automation and reallocation shock that we saw in the late '90s and early 2000s," though the Goldman Sachs report notes his expectation that AI will create many new jobs over the long term even as it eliminates existing ones.
Proponents of sovereign wealth funds argue the structures could channel AI-driven gains back to the public, whether through funding national AI infrastructure or taking equity stakes in AI companies. Research firm Windfall Trust notes a tension in the model, however: the financial mandate to maximize returns for citizens can conflict with a strategic mandate to build domestic AI capacity, particularly when the most attractive investments are foreign firms.
Whether Sanders's legislation advances or stalls, the Verasight survey signals that public pressure for some form of shared economic participation in the AI buildout is hardening — and that policymakers will face growing demand to respond as layoffs continue accumulating.
Jay Goldberg is a staff writer at TechEchelon covering technology, markets, and policy. He files the breaking news and deal coverage that move the publication's core desks.
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