Policy Snapshot
Giving citizens a direct ownership stakes in AI infrastructure via equity stakes
Scenario
Gradual
Augmentation
All Scenarios
Rapid
Automation
Scope
Near Term
(Volatility Risks)
Medium Term
(Transition Risks)
Long Term
(Structural Risks)
Governance Level
Local
National
International
Target
Entrepreneurs
Displaced Workers
Primary Actor
Governments
Private Actors
Universal Basic Capital / Equity
Direct ownership stakes in AI infrastructure and the broader economy distributed to all citizens, so that returns from automated production flow widely rather than concentrating among existing capital owners.
What it is:
Unlike Universal Basic Income (UBI), which redistributes cash after wealth is generated (and often relies on fragile tax transfers), UBC focuses on "predistribution" by democratizing the ownership of productive assets. In an AI-driven economy where autonomous systems replace labor as the primary drivers of value, wages may no longer be a reliable mechanism for distributing wealth. UBC solves this by granting citizens an equity stake in the technology itself. This ensures that as the "pie" grows due to automation, every citizen’s share grows automatically without constant political battles over tax rates.
Recommended Reading:
Nicolas Berggruen, Nathan Gardels
Universal Basic Capital: An Idea Whose Time Has Come
December 2025
Nicolas Berggruen has advocated for "universal investment funds" where all citizens hold shares across the AI economy, essentially a predistributive supplemental pension funded by compounded returns. In The Digitalist Papers, Berggruen and Gardels advance UBC as a predistributive alternative to UBI, arguing that broad-based ownership of AI-era capital — via publicly seeded and collectively managed investment funds — is essential to counter rising inequality and ensure that the returns to automation are shared across society.
David Autor, Neil Thompson
Beyond Job Displacement: How AI Could Reshape the Value of Human Expertise
December 2025
Autor and Thompson suggest a UBC system “granting every person a meaningful ownership stake in productive assets from birth.” They believe we should begin experimenting with this system now as, “if UBC were issued immediately to recent and future birth cohorts, it would still take multiple decades for capital ownership rights to be broadly diffused.”
Centre for British Progress
Designing an AI Bond for Growth and Shared Prosperity in the UK
July 2025
Emma Casey, Emma Rockall, and Helena Roy propose an “AI Bond" to democratize the economic benefits of the AI transition. This financial instrument would allow citizens to invest directly in the nation's critical AI infrastructure, ensuring that the wealth generated by these technologies is shared broadly across the country rather than remaining concentrated in tech hubs like London.
Saffron Huang, Sam Manning
Here’s How To Share AI’s Future Wealth
April 2025
Huang and Manning advocate for tools like AI bonds and public utility regulation for compute to ensure broad-based ownership.
Sam Altman
May 2025
The OpenAI CEO has proposed "Universal Basic Compute" that would involve giving every person a slice of a future GPT-model’s processing power to use or resell.
Real-world precedents:
Connecticut’s Baby Bonds (2021) involves investments of $3,200 for every child born into on Medicaid (approximately 15,000 babies a year) to grow tax-free until adulthood. It is expected to yield around $10,000-$11,000 per beneficiary by maturity at age 18 for approved uses, such as education, homeownership, business, or retirement.
The MAGA (Money Accounts for Growth and Advancement), introduced by President Trump in 2025, proposes baby bonds funded with $1,000 for every child born after 2025, creating a tax-advantaged investment account to build capital ownership from birth.
Spain’s Mondragon Corporation illustrates a worker-ownership model where labor retains equity in productive capital, ensuring resilience against technological displacement by redistributing profits and retraining workers within its cooperative federation.
© 2026 Windfall Trust. All rights reserved.