Klein, Glazer Urge Blocking AI IPOs and Taxing Billionaires After 40% Wealth Surge
Updated
Updated · The Guardian · Nov 2
Klein, Glazer Urge Blocking AI IPOs and Taxing Billionaires After 40% Wealth Surge
1 articles · Updated · The Guardian · Nov 2
Summary
Naomi Klein and Ilana Glazer called for legal and legislative action to stop planned AI IPOs, arguing they would mint new billionaires while shifting speculative risk onto ordinary Americans.
Anthropic and OpenAI were singled out as likely candidates to go public despite recent security flaws and heavy debt, which the authors said could magnify market instability if AI valuations collapse.
Their case ties those risks to broader inequality: billionaire wealth has risen 40% in two years, and nearly 1,000 billionaires now live and do business in the United States.
The pair also pushed wealth taxes in states such as California and New York, saying taxation alone is insufficient without blocking tech listings that deepen concentration of wealth and economic dependence on one sector.
The warning extends beyond AI startups to the wider economy, where the 10 most valuable public companies are already in tech and another bubble burst could hit pensions, jobs and public finances.