Vinod Khosla has a bold vision for how society can be reconfigured to share the wealth created by AI technology. Speaking at the TechCrunch Disrupt 2025 conference on Tuesday, the founder of Khosla Ventures suggested that the US government could take a 10% stake in every public company and redistribute that company’s wealth to the general public.
The idea, Khosla said, was prompted by President Donald Trump’s decision for the US government to buy 10% of Intel’s shares. “When Trump bought 10% of Intel, I thought maybe that wasn’t a good idea,” Khosla said on stage at Disrupt. “You take 10% of every company and put it into a national pool for the people. That’s really interesting. You just need to take 10% of every publicly traded company.”
AI leaders have considered proposals for a universal basic income in the past, most notably Open Research’s extended study on cash payments, sponsored in part by Sam Altman. Still, it’s rare to see such a clear support for state funding in private industry from a prominent investor. Khosla acknowledged on stage that there had been controversy, but said extreme proposals were needed to maintain social cohesion through the disruption of artificial general intelligence.
“We’re going to take criticism on this idea,” Khosla said. “But you know, sharing the wealth of AI is a really, really big need to equalize the benefits for everyone… We don’t have to do it in 15 years, but we have to take care of those people. By 2035, we’re going to be a very, very deflationary economy.”
Khosla also warned that the rise of AI could lead to job losses and would require major societal changes. For startup founders, he said, this is an opportunity to build, noting that startups exist in building AI for every profession, including accounting, medicine, chip design, auditing, marketing, and entertainment.
The VC also suggested that the nature of work will change in the AI era, potentially eliminating jobs currently performed by humans. He pointed out that jobs like installing tires on an assembly line or working as a farmer are “not jobs that people should be doing.”
“It’s slavery to survival,” Khosla says.
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