Sarah Polcz, UC Davis Professor, Shaped Sanders' AI Wealth Fund Bill

When a law review article ends up credited on the Senate floor, something unusual has happened in the academic-to-policy pipeline. The Information profiled Sarah Polcz, a University of California, Davis, law professor whose work sits at the center of Senator Bernie Sanders' push to create a public ownership stake in artificial intelligence.

Polcz and George Washington University law professor Jeremy Bearer-Friend co-authored "Sharing the Algorithm: The Tax Solution to Generative AI," published in the Columbia Journal of Tax Law. The paper proposes an equity tax on AI companies that would require them to remit taxes in stock rather than cash, giving the public ownership alongside existing shareholders. Polcz made the argument publicly in an April 29 op-ed in The Hill, and Sanders cited both scholars' research as inspiration when he announced his plans. He formally introduced the American AI Sovereign Wealth Fund Act on June 18, 2026. Polcz described the moment on X: "So exciting that Bernie Sanders is coming out with strong support of the proposal I made with Prof @bearerfriend that the public ought to be owners of AI alongside existing shareholders via an equity tax on AI companies."

The bill targets AI companies generating more than $200 million in annual AI-related revenue and imposes a one-time 50 percent tax payable in stock rather than cash. Those shares would flow into a sovereign wealth fund managed by a seven-member Independent Commission for Democratic AI, with members nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate. Sanders' office estimates the fund could reach $7 trillion at current valuations, nearly seven times the size of Norway's Government Pension Fund Global, with a 5 percent annual distribution potentially paying each American more than $1,000.

The Information's profile reportedly opens with a scene involving Polcz and her husband, Adam Brown, described as a top scientist at Google's DeepMind, hosting a gathering at their Portola Valley home connected to the initiative. The full piece is behind a paywall, so the precise nature of Polcz's advisory relationship with Sanders' team is not fully visible from available reporting.

The honest caveat is that a 50 percent equity levy faces significant political and legal headwinds before it could become law. But the question the paper poses about who captures value that AI generates from public knowledge, human labor, and creative works is not going away, and the Polcz-Bearer-Friend framework has already done something notable: moved a tax law journal argument into the center of an active congressional debate.