AI wealth will be redistributed, warns veteran VC Neil Rimer—voluntarily or by force

Rimer's comment about wealth redistribution carries unusual weight because he is a direct beneficiary of the AI windfall he says will eventually need to be shared, yet he is urging his peers to choose voluntary giving over forced taxation. The article situates this moment within American economic history: the top 1% now hold 31.7% of U.S. wealth (a Federal Reserve record since 1989), and the nation's 19 richest households command 14% of GDP—a share that dwarfs the 4% held by the four largest fortunes during the peak of the first Gilded Age around 1910. Yet voluntary giving, the traditional valve for such concentration, is closing. The Giving Pledge, which launched in 2010 as a landmark commitment from billionaires to give away half their fortunes, collected 113 signatories in its first five years and just four in all of 2024. Across the broader population, the share of Americans giving to charity has fallen for five straight years, and even affluent household giving has slipped from 90% in 2017 to 81% last year.

The article draws an explicit parallel to the 1930s, when Andrew Carnegie's "Gospel of Wealth"—the intellectual ancestor of the Giving Pledge—failed to address the pressure building from inequality, and Franklin Roosevelt's "soak-the-rich tax" raised the top marginal income tax rate to 79%. Today's policy proposals echo that era: California is preparing to put a 5% wealth tax to voters, and OpenAI has reportedly discussed ceding a 5% equity stake to the federal government. Some billionaires, including Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page, have already relocated to South Florida to hedge against such taxes. The article notes that among newly wealthy AI employees—many from Anthropic, a firm in Index's portfolio—the philanthropic instinct is notably absent; most are pursuing angel investing or starting companies rather than pledging fortunes to charity.