VC Vinod Khosla says the US government could take 10% stake in all public companies to soften the blow of AGI

Vinod Khosla has a bold vision of how to reshape society to share the abundance 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 all public corporations and redistribute that corporate wealth to the public at large.

As Khosla says, the idea was spurred on by President Donald Trump’s decision for the US government Buy a 10% share of Intel. “When Trump bought 10% of Intel, I thought it wasn’t a good idea,” Khosla said onstage at Disrupt. “Take 10% of every corporation and put it in a national pool for the public. It’s really interesting. Take 10% of every public company.”

AI leaders explored Universal Basic Income proposal In the past, most notably within OpenResearch Extended study on cash paymentsSupported by Sam Altman. Yet it is rare for a prominent investor to so clearly support national partnerships in private industry. Khosla acknowledged the controversy on stage, but said extreme proposals were necessary to maintain social cohesion through the disruption of artificial general intelligence.”

“I will get criticism for this idea,” Khosla said. “But you know, there’s a really, really big need to share the wealth of AI so that everyone benefits equally…We don’t need to do it in 15 years, but we need to take care of those people. By 2035 we’ll have a huge, huge inflationary economy.”

Khosla also warned that the rise of AI will also displace jobs, requiring significant social change. For startup founders, this presents an opportunity to build, he said, a startup building AI for every profession, such as accounting, medicine, chip design, auditing, marketing, entertainment and more.

The VC also suggested that the nature of work will change in the AI ​​era, as tasks that people perform today may be gone. He pointed to jobs like putting tires on an assembly line or working as a farmer as “not jobs that people should have.”

“It’s slavery to survive,” Khosla said.