{"id":135647,"date":"2026-07-18T06:49:09","date_gmt":"2026-07-18T06:49:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mailinvest.blog\/index.php\/2026\/07\/18\/neil-rimer-thinks-the-ai-money-is-coming-back-out\/"},"modified":"2026-07-18T06:50:31","modified_gmt":"2026-07-18T06:50:31","slug":"neil-rimer-thinks-the-ai-money-is-coming-back-out","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mailinvest.blog\/index.php\/2026\/07\/18\/neil-rimer-thinks-the-ai-money-is-coming-back-out\/","title":{"rendered":"Neil Rimer thinks the AI money is coming back out"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a>\n
<\/p>\n

\n

In late Might, Neil Rimer mentioned one thing throughout a sit-down I had with him in Athens that I haven\u2019t been capable of shake. At a vibrant new tech festival<\/a> within the metropolis, speaking concerning the wealth piling up round AI, he mentioned he has \u201ca robust sense that there will probably be some type of a redistribution.\u201d He continued on. \u201cIt\u2019ll both be voluntary or it\u2019ll be involuntary, but it surely\u2019ll occur, and I hope it\u2019s voluntary,\u201d he informed me, including that he thinks tech leaders \u201ccan play a number one position in seeing that by.\u201d<\/p>\n

Coming from most individuals, that will sound like standard-issue populism. Coming from Rimer, a co-founder of Index Ventures, some of the profitable enterprise companies of the final three a long time, it appeared a putting factor to say in public.<\/p>\n

Rimer stepped again from day-to-day investing in 2021, and as of late spends a lot of his time in Athens, the place his spouse is from and the place his kids treasure their Greek passports. He turned as much as our interview in a rumpled button-down and denims, not the quarter-zips and effective knitwear that mark so a lot of his friends. But Index\u2019s returns in recent times have been distinctive: the agency has raised roughly $15 billion from outdoors traders since its founding, and final yr\u2019s exits together with Figma\u2019s IPO and Google\u2019s buy of the cybersecurity agency Wiz reportedly netted Index roughly $9 billion<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Rimer has discovered methods to offer again. He sits on the board of Endeavor Greece, which mentors entrepreneurs in rising markets, and chaired the board of Human Rights Watch from 2019 to 2025. In late 2021, he and his father and two brothers gave $13 million to McGill College to renovate a campus constructing, now the Rimer Constructing, and located a brand new Institute for Indigenous Analysis and Knowledges.<\/p>\n

Within the meantime, his remark about redistribution comes at an odd second, to be charitable, for giving. The Giving Pledge, the promise Warren Buffett and Invoice Gates launched in 2010 to get billionaires to commit half their fortunes to charity, is turning into more and more irrelevant. 100 and 13 households signed in its first 5 years, then 72, then 43, then simply 4 in all of 2024, per a New York Occasions report in March<\/a> that underscored how out-of-fashion philanthropy has develop into amongst among the richest individuals in tech. (Famous that piece: \u201cElon Musk, the world\u2019s wealthiest individual, has mentioned that his companies \u2018are<\/em>\u00a0philanthropy.\u2019\u201d)<\/p>\n

The sample seems to carry past the Pledge. Complete American charitable giving hit a report $592.5 billion in 2024, however the variety of Individuals truly giving has fallen for five straight years<\/a>, down 4.5% in 2024 alone, in line with the Stanford Social Innovation Assessment. Two-thirds of households donated in 2000; roughly half do now, and Financial institution of America and Lilly Household College information exhibits even affluent-household giving has slipped, from 90% in 2017 to 81% last year<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The sample exhibits up in Index\u2019s personal portfolio, too, which includes Anthropic<\/a>. Enterprise Insider not too long ago requested a monetary planner, Alex Caswell, whether or not his newly rich purchasers, a lot of them Anthropic workers tied to efficient altruism, had been pledging to offer away the majority of their fortunes. Anthropic matches worker donations of as much as 25% of their fairness to charity, and a few of Caswell\u2019s purchasers have used it, he informed BI, however most weren\u2019t constructing philanthropy into their plans in any respect; they had been centered on angel investing or beginning their very own corporations. \u201cThat\u2019s what I\u2019m seeing greater than the will to develop into philanthropic,\u201d he told the outlet<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Unsurprisingly, the absence of voluntary giving is now operating up in opposition to makes an attempt to legislate the end result as a substitute. California voters will resolve this yr on a 5% one-time wealth tax that targets the state\u2019s billionaires. Some, together with Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Web page, have already moved their main residences to South Florida<\/a> to be on the protected facet. <\/p>\n

OpenAI is reportedly contemplating going public in 2027<\/a>, and cynically, one cause among others<\/a> could also be that the tax, if handed, will calculate web price based mostly on a person\u2019s worldwide belongings as of the tip of this calendar yr. <\/p>\n

As unsurprisingly, there’s loads of opposition to any type of wealth-redistribution measure of this scale, together with by Governor Gavin Newsom, and together with by economists<\/a> who level out that many industrialized international locations have repealed comparable wealth taxes since 1990 after watching their rich residents skedaddle. <\/p>\n

Different choices on the desk are as controversial. OpenAI has reportedly mentioned handing the federal authorities a 5% equity stake<\/a>, an thought CEO Sam Altman has framed as sharing AI\u2019s upside with the general public, however critics see it as a substitute as a method to purchase political cowl in Washington. In both case, Silicon Valley has by no means been keen to place Uncle Sam on the cap desk. Joked veteran investor Roelof Botha throughout a separate sit-down<\/a> with this editor final yr: \u201c[Some] of probably the most harmful phrases on the planet are: \u2018I\u2019m from the federal government, and I\u2019m right here to assist.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s price considering by how a lot wealth sits outdoors these mechanisms. Musk is price simply over $1 trillion, after SpaceX\u2019s IPO final month made him the primary individual to succeed in that mark. Forbes counted 45 new AI billionaires<\/a> in its 2026 rankings alone, price a mixed $2.9 trillion, and that\u2019s earlier than both Anthropic or OpenAI has gone public. In that very same BI story about Anthropic workers, BI notes that after Anthropic and OpenAI full their IPOs, their mixed workers will maintain sufficient wealth to purchase practically a 3rd of all houses within the San Francisco metro space.<\/p>\n

It feels<\/em> unprecedented, however whether or not it represents an historic excessive is a matter of some debate. The share of wealth held by the highest 1% of U.S. households hit 31.7%<\/a> within the third quarter of final yr, a report because the Federal Reserve started monitoring the info in 1989, and roughly equal to what the opposite 90% of households outdoors the highest decile held mixed. <\/p>\n

That\u2019s nonetheless under the 45% the highest 1% commanded on the Gilded Age peak in 1916. However slim the lens to the tippy prime, and the image flips. Famend economist Gabriel Zucman calculates that on the peak of the Gilded Age, round 1910, America\u2019s 4 largest fortunes had been price a mixed 4% of U.S. GDP. Immediately, that very same sliver of the inhabitants \u2014 now 19 households<\/a> as a substitute of 4 \u2014 is price 14%.<\/p>\n

Rimer\u2019s two paths, voluntary or compelled, have precedent from the final time American wealth focus reached this stage. In 1889, on the peak of the primary Gilded Age, Andrew Carnegie printed an essay arguing {that a} wealthy man ought to deal with his fortune as a belief to be distributed for the general public good inside his personal lifetime, calling it a shame to die rich. That essay, \u201cThe Gospel of Wealth<\/a>,\u201d grew to become the founding doc of contemporary philanthropy and the mental ancestor of the Giving Pledge. <\/p>\n

It didn\u2019t maintain off the opposite path for lengthy, although. By the mid-Nineteen Thirties, Louisiana Senator Huey Lengthy had constructed a nationwide following behind a program known as Share Our Wealth<\/a>, demanding steep taxes on the wealthy to fund a assured revenue for each American. Fearful about shedding working-class help to Lengthy, Franklin Roosevelt pushed by what the press known as the \u201csoak-the-rich tax,\u201d elevating the highest marginal revenue tax charge as excessive as 79%. It redistributed lower than Lengthy needed, but it surely stays the clearest instance in American historical past of politically compelled redistribution arriving as soon as voluntary giving did not adequately deal with the strain constructing beneath it.<\/p>\n

None of that is information to Rimer, who has spent his profession in tech. What\u2019s extra curious to him is \u201cthe ethical heart of tech corporations,\u201d a fascination he traced to being a Stanford undergrad in 1984, when Apple discounted the primary Macintosh for college kids and Steve Jobs and Apple\u2019s different founders had been, in his phrases, \u201cheroes\u201d for constructing one thing he felt was genuinely good for the world. <\/p>\n

What troubles him now, he mentioned, is listening to his personal kids speak about sure tech corporations the way in which an earlier technology talked about protection contractors or cigarette makers.<\/p>\n

Critics could observe that Rimer \u2014 as an investor in Anthropic and different tech corporations \u2014 is a direct beneficiary of the windfall he says will ultimately must be shared. However he\u2019d fairly see his fellow beneficiaries select to offer among the a refund than have it taken from them. There\u2019s a straightforward method to do that and a tough method, and Rimer is betting on individuals choosing the simple one earlier than historical past picks it for them.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

While you buy by hyperlinks in our articles, we may earn a small commission<\/a>. This doesn\u2019t have an effect on our editorial independence.<\/em><\/p>\n