The United States is home to most of the world’s leading artificial intelligence companies, yet many Americans do not feel they share in the resulting abundance. AI is fueling unprecedented growth and wealth creation: in the first half of 2026, tech-focused hedge funds returned 27% on average, while the Nasdaq-100 rose about 20%. But many citizens do not own that innovation, and so miss out on its profits — a gap that is likely to widen, not close, as AI scales.

Making Americans owners

That is the case made in a Fortune commentary, which argues there is a way for more Americans to share in the upside of AI: make more of them owners. “Innovation Accounts,” modeled on the Trump Accounts created for newborns, would put seed money into a technology-stock index on behalf of adults, giving each of them a stake in America’s technological engine.

The idea intersects with proposals already circulating at the highest levels. OpenAI has reportedly floated giving the government up to a 5% stake in the company and suggested other leading AI companies do the same. Both President Trump and progressive Democrats have floated public ownership stakes in AI companies, as Fortune has reported. But the commentary contends that governments make poor stock-pickers, and that it would be better to let individuals own the upside directly.

The math

The arithmetic is straightforward, the author writes: $1,000 invested in the Nasdaq-100 a decade ago — an index that tracks the largest non-financial companies on the Nasdaq exchange and has returned 21% annually — would be worth $5,727 more today. Seed an innovation account with $5,000, and that is $28,635 in gains.

A precedent already in law

The proposal is an extension of an idea that is already law. Trump Accounts, created under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, give American children born from 2025 through 2028 a $1,000 government-funded stake in the stock market. Alaska has run a version of the concept for decades: its Permanent Fund invests a share of the state’s oil wealth and pays nearly every resident, children included, an annual dividend from the earnings.

Under the plan, a private-sector asset manager would invest the innovation accounts under government oversight, with participants able to cash out gains at specific intervals, potentially every couple of years. Investing in individual stocks carries risk, but a diversified technology index fund — a basket of many stocks rather than a single company — would give Americans access to the upside of AI-driven productivity growth.

An ownership gap

The case rests on a persistent ownership gap. Just 58% of American adults own stock, Gallup found in April, much of it held in retirement accounts. That means most people are exposed to AI’s downsides — rising electricity costs, potential job disruption — without any claim on its upside. Innovation Accounts, the author argues, would close that gap.

Giving Americans $1,000 or $5,000 invested in a technology index is a straightforward idea, the piece acknowledges; the source and use of the funds will likely be the subject of great debate. Federal or state governments could seed the accounts, but philanthropy offers a faster, deficit-neutral start. The beneficiaries of AI — founders, early employees, investors and the foundations at labs like OpenAI and Anthropic — are a natural source of capital for the idea, given the meaningful liquidity around the corner.

Who qualifies

The hardest design question is eligibility. Opening $1,000 accounts for every American over 18 years old — the age at which Trump Accounts end — would cost roughly $270 billion. Limiting eligibility to households with wealth under $500,000, about 70% of Americans, would cut that figure to $190 billion.

The program could also be targeted rather than universal — triggered by sector-specific unemployment spikes, income level, or geography, so the money flows first to the workers AI disrupts most. As one example, an “unemployment trigger” could target those in highly impacted sectors: if unemployment in a person’s sector (by NAICS code — the North American Industry Classification System, the federal government’s standard for classifying industries) runs at 1.5 times that sector’s average unemployment level over the past 10 years, the person would qualify. The author hopes other economists will offer even more elegant targeting solutions.

Universal basic capital

The broader idea of “universal basic capital” — for everyone, not only those affected by AI — has drawn support from figures as varied as MIT economist David Autor, OpenAI’s Sam Altman and Senator Bernie Sanders. The practical question is scope: a $5 billion pilot, plus administrative costs, could seed 1 million accounts at $5,000 each. If it works, the government or philanthropists could scale it over time.

Limits and the case for acting now

The commentary is candid about the limits. An extra $6,000 or $29,000 in gains over a decade will not replace a lost job. But it would give people capital to retrain, start a business, or navigate whatever comes next — on their own terms. A philanthropic pilot could start compounding those returns today, without waiting on Congress. And while the Nasdaq-100 or a similar tech-heavy index is not guaranteed to deliver 21% returns each year for a decade going forward, the author notes that when it does deliver, more Americans can win. Rather than a direct cash transfer, the proposal is framed as an investment in more Americans benefiting from the country’s innovation prowess.

The United States is home to most of the world’s leading AI labs and attracts more private AI investment than any other country — a level of ingenuity that many other countries, and even continents, would, in the author’s words, “kill” to have on their shores. It is no accident, the piece argues, that America built the labs driving the AI revolution, and their continued success is a common project. If Americans do not feel they are sharing in what the labs and other AI leaders create, the backlash will land on the innovators as much as anyone.

No one knows exactly what magnitude of job displacement AI will cause — that will only become clear once it arrives. But uncertainty is not a reason to wait or do nothing, the author writes; it is a reason to build a plan, fund it, and hope it is never needed. The country, the argument goes, needs economic infrastructure to help Americans absorb these shocks, and Innovation Accounts would strengthen households’ balance sheets in a time of significant disruption and abundance.

“Ingenuity is central to the American story. So is sharing in its abundance,” the commentary concludes. “This proposal isn’t partisan — it’s patriotic.”

The opinions expressed in Fortune.com commentary pieces are solely the views of their authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and beliefs of Fortune. This story was originally featured on Fortune.com.