ATHENS — In late May, Neil Rimer, co-founder of Index Ventures, made a prediction that has lingered in the minds of those who heard it: the immense wealth being generated by artificial intelligence will eventually be redistributed, whether tech leaders choose to give it away or are forced to by law.
Speaking at a new tech festival in Athens, Rimer told this editor that he has “a strong sense that there will be some sort of a redistribution. It’ll either be voluntary or it’ll be involuntary, but it’ll happen, and I hope it’s voluntary.” He added that tech leaders “can play a leading role in seeing that through.”
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Coming from most people, that might sound like standard populism. Coming from Rimer, whose firm Index Ventures has generated exceptional returns — roughly $9 billion from exits including Figma’s IPO and Google’s purchase of cybersecurity firm Wiz last year — the comment carried unusual weight. Rimer stepped back from day-to-day investing in 2021 and now splits his time between Athens and other pursuits, including serving on the board of Endeavor Greece and chairing Human Rights Watch from 2019 to 2025.
The Philanthropy Gap Widens
Rimer’s warning comes at a moment when voluntary giving among the ultra-wealthy is in decline. The Giving Pledge, launched in 2010 by Warren Buffett and Bill Gates, attracted 113 families in its first five years. By 2024, only four new signatories joined, according to a New York Times report. Elon Musk, the world’s wealthiest person, has said his businesses “are philanthropy.”
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The trend extends beyond the Pledge. Total American charitable giving hit a record $592.5 billion in 2024, but the number of Americans donating has fallen for five straight years, down 4.5% in 2024 alone, per the Stanford Social Innovation Review. Even affluent households are giving less: Bank of America and Lilly Family School data shows the share of wealthy households donating slipped from 90% in 2017 to 81% last year.
Index’s own portfolio reflects the pattern. Anthropic, a portfolio company, matches employee donations of up to 25% of equity to charity, but Business Insider reported that most newly wealthy Anthropic employees are not building philanthropy into their plans. Instead, they are focused on angel investing or starting their own companies.
Legislative Pressure Builds
As voluntary giving falters, political pressure for forced redistribution is mounting. California voters will decide this year on a 5% one-time wealth tax targeting billionaires. Some tech founders, including Google’s Sergey Brin and Larry Page, have already moved their primary residences to South Florida. OpenAI is reportedly considering a 2027 IPO, partly to lock in valuations before the tax could take effect.
Governor Gavin Newsom opposes the measure, and economists note that most industrialized countries that enacted similar wealth taxes since 1990 have repealed them after wealthy residents relocated. Other proposals are equally contentious. OpenAI has discussed giving the federal government a 5% equity stake, an idea CEO Sam Altman has framed as sharing AI’s upside with the public — but critics see it as an attempt to buy political cover.
The scale of wealth at stake is staggering. Musk became the first person worth over $1 trillion after SpaceX’s IPO last month. Forbes counted 45 new AI billionaires in its 2026 rankings, worth a combined $2.9 trillion, before Anthropic or OpenAI have gone public. Business Insider calculated that once both companies complete their IPOs, their combined employees will hold enough wealth to buy nearly a third of all homes in the San Francisco metro area.
Historical Parallels and Rimer’s Bet
The top 1% of U.S. households now hold 31.7% of national wealth, a record since the Federal Reserve began tracking the data in 1989. Economist Gabriel Zucman calculates that at the height of the Gilded Age around 1910, America’s four largest fortunes were worth 4% of GDP. Today, 19 households control 14% of GDP.
Rimer’s two paths — voluntary or forced — have historical precedent. In 1889, Andrew Carnegie published “The Gospel of Wealth,” arguing the rich should distribute their fortunes for public good during their lifetimes. It became the intellectual foundation of modern philanthropy. But by the 1930s, Huey Long’s Share Our Wealth program and Franklin Roosevelt’s “soak-the-rich tax” pushed top marginal rates to 79%, the clearest example of forced redistribution when voluntary giving fell short.
Rimer, who traces his concern to being a Stanford undergrad in 1984 when Steve Jobs and Apple were heroes for building something genuinely good, now worries about the “moral center of tech companies.” He hears his own children talk about certain tech firms the way an earlier generation talked about defense contractors or cigarette makers.
Critics may note that Rimer is a direct beneficiary of the AI windfall he says needs sharing — Index invested in Anthropic. But he’d rather see his fellow beneficiaries choose to give back than have it taken from them. “There’s an easy way to do this and a hard way,” he said. Rimer is betting on people picking the easy one before history picks it for them.
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