A New Model for the AI Era

We are living through the fastest accumulation of private wealth in recorded history. And nearly all of it is flowing in one direction.

The richest 1% of U.S. households now own 31.7% of all national wealth — the highest share the Federal Reserve has ever recorded. Much of that growth came directly from AI-linked stock market gains, concentrating the financial returns of the AI revolution among those who already owned the most.

The numbers beneath that headline are starker still. During the AI-driven market surge of 2024–2025, the top 10% of U.S. households saw their wealth grow by $5 trillion in a single quarter — while the bottom 50% gained just $150 billion. That is not a gap. It is a chasm. And it is widening by the quarter.

The Jobs Picture Is Just as Troubling

The displacement has already begun: quietly, and then all at once.

Goldman Sachs estimates that around 300 million full-time jobs globally could be affected by generative AI. Among workers aged 22–25 in the most AI-exposed roles, employment has already dropped 6% since late 2022. For young software developers specifically, the decline is nearly 20%.

Goldman Sachs economists have called AI "the big story in 2026 in labor" — and warn that if job losses accelerate, it could meaningfully pressure the Federal Reserve to intervene. Entry-level workers in their 20s and 30s entering knowledge and content creation sectors are likely to be most affected.

The Anthropic CEO has projected that AI could eliminate roughly 50% of white-collar entry-level positions within five years. An entire generation of workers may find the first rung of the career ladder has been removed — not broken, but gone.

Inequality Has Never Remained Peaceful

History is unambiguous on what happens next.

The UN's World Social Report 2025 found that economic insecurity, rising inequality, and declining trust are already destabilizing societies worldwide. Nearly 60% of people globally fear losing their job and being unable to find new employment. Violent conflicts are now more widespread than at any point in the past 30 years.

Scholars since Aristotle have documented the link between persistent economic inequality and the propensity of individuals and groups to engage in social and political unrest. When people perceive the system as rigged — when the gains of a civilization-altering technology flow exclusively to those who already hold power — trust erodes, institutions fracture, and societies become volatile.

The UN has called for an urgent new policy consensus anchored in equity, economic security for all, and solidarity. The question is: who answers that call, and how?

This Idea Has Worked Before.

The principle behind the Public Equity Fund is not new — it is proven.

In 1976, Alaska took a simple but radical step: it required that a minimum of 25% of annual oil royalties be set aside, invested, and paid out directly to citizens as a dividend — recognizing the equal right of every resident to a share in the state's natural wealth. Today, that annual payment — this year set at $3,284 per eligible Alaskan — represents not a handout, but a calculated return on shared assets, returning value to the very people who helped build and steward them.

In Israel, a different but equally instructive model took hold. In 1993, the government launched the Yozma initiative — a program that used strategic equity investment and matching funds to catalyze a venture capital industry virtually from scratch. Within five years, Israel went from a single active VC fund to a thriving high-tech ecosystem, earning the nation the moniker "Startup Nation."

And in Norway, the world's largest sovereign wealth fund now stands equivalent to $1 million for every Norwegian family of four — invested across more than 9,000 companies in 70 countries — born from the conviction that a nation's windfall belongs to all of its people, not only those who happened to hold equity when the resource was discovered.

The technology revolution now underway dwarfs any oil field ever found. The question is whether we will apply the same wisdom — or repeat the mistakes of every prior era that failed to.

This Is the Moment. This Is the Answer.

The Public Equity Fund will be established on a foundational conviction: if artificial intelligence becomes the infrastructure of civilization, then humanity itself deserves a stake in the value being created.

This is not charity. It is not a government program. It is a new model of leadership: one that recognizes that long-term trust, social stability, and shared human flourishing are not obstacles to the AI era. They are its prerequisites.

Founded in direct response to Pope Leo XIV's encyclical Magnifica Humanitas — his urgent call to ensure technology remains in service of the human person — the Public Equity Fund is seeded by personal founder equity, not corporate obligation. It costs existing shareholders nothing. It asks of its founders everything: the willingness to believe that how we build this era matters as much as what we build.

The window for getting this right is open. It will not remain so indefinitely.

"Each generation inherits the task of shaping its own era, of guiding history to become a place where the dignity of every person is safeguarded, justice is promoted and fraternity is made possible." — His Holiness Pope Leo XIV, Magnifica Humanitas

The Public Equity Fund: details on structure, governance, and participation to be announced.