In unhurried Would possibly per chance well per chance per chance also fair, Neil Rimer stated one thing at some level of a sit down-down I had with him in Athens that I haven’t been in a spot to shake. At a sharp current tech competition within the metropolis, talking regarding the wealth piling up spherical AI, he stated he has “a stable sense that there will be some form of a redistribution.” He continued on. “It’ll both be voluntary or it’ll be involuntary, nevertheless it’ll happen, and I’m hoping it’s voluntary,” he told me, adding that he thinks tech leaders “can play a main blueprint in seeing that via.”
Coming from most of us, that can sound like regular-self-discipline populism. Coming from Rimer, a co-founding father of Index Ventures, one among basically the most winning endeavor companies of the closing three decades, it gave the impact a striking factor to claim in public.
Rimer stepped make the most of day-to-day investing in 2021, and currently spends worthy of his time in Athens, the save his wife is from and the save his young of us enjoy their Greek passports. He grew to modified into as a lot as our interview in a rumpled button-down and denims, no longer the quarter-zips and ravishing knitwear that establish so rather quite loads of his peers. But Index’s returns in most contemporary years had been distinctive: the firm has raised roughly $15 billion from exterior investors since its founding, and closing 365 days’s exits including Figma’s IPO and Google’s bear of the cybersecurity firm Wiz reportedly netted Index roughly $9 billion.
Rimer has discovered ways to present advantage. He sits on the board of Endeavor Greece, which mentors entrepreneurs in emerging markets, and chaired the board of Human Rights Glance from 2019 to 2025. In unhurried 2021, he and his father and two brothers gave $13 million to McGill University to renovate a campus constructing, now the Rimer Building, and discovered a brand current Institute for Indigenous Analysis and Knowledges.
For the time being, his insist about redistribution comes at an uncommon moment, to be charitable, for giving. The Giving Pledge, the promise Warren Buffett and Invoice Gates launched in 2010 to discover billionaires to commit half of their fortunes to charity, is popping into increasingly irrelevant. A hundred and thirteen households signed in its first five years, then 72, then 43, then fair four in all of 2024, per a New York Times chronicle in March that underscored how out-of-vogue philanthropy has modified into amongst a pair of of the richest of us in tech. (Eminent that share: “Elon Musk, the field’s wealthiest person, has stated that his companies ‘are philanthropy.’”)
The sample appears to be like to profit previous the Pledge. Complete American charitable giving hit a chronicle $592.5 billion in 2024, however the sequence of Americans certainly giving has fallen for five straight years, down 4.5% in 2024 by myself, in preserving with the Stanford Social Innovation Overview. Two-thirds of households donated in 2000; roughly half of originate now, and Financial institution of The US and Lilly Family School recordsdata reveals even affluent-household giving has slipped, from 90% in 2017 to 81% closing 365 days.
The sample reveals up in Index’s believe portfolio, too, which contains Anthropic. Industrial Insider no longer too long ago asked a monetary planner, Alex Caswell, whether or no longer his newly affluent clients, rather quite loads of them Anthropic workers tied to effective altruism, were pledging to present away the bulk of their fortunes. Anthropic fits employee donations of as a lot as 25% of their equity to charity, and some of Caswell’s clients bear veteran it, he told BI, but most weren’t constructing philanthropy into their plans at all; they were excited about angel investing or starting their believe companies. “That’s what I’m seeing more than the ought to modified into philanthropic,” he told the outlet.
Unsurprisingly, the absence of voluntary giving is now running up against makes an try to legislate the as an different. California voters will judge this 365 days on a 5% one-time wealth tax that targets the command’s billionaires. Some, including Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page, bear already moved their foremost residences to South Florida to be on the earn facet.
OpenAI is reportedly fervent on going public in 2027, and cynically, one motive amongst others will be that the tax, if passed, will calculate earn payment basically based totally on an particular person’s worldwide sources as of the terminate of this calendar 365 days.
As unsurprisingly, there’s masses of opposition to any form of wealth-redistribution measure of this scale, including by Governor Gavin Newsom, and including by economists who uncover that many industrialized nations bear repealed equal wealth taxes since 1990 after looking out at their affluent residents rush.
Other alternatives on the desk are as controversial. OpenAI has reportedly discussed handing the federal executive a 5% equity stake, an thought CEO Sam Altman has framed as sharing AI’s upside with the public, but critics search it as an different with a blueprint to amass political conceal in Washington. In both case, Silicon Valley has by no formulation been fervent to position Uncle Sam on the cap desk. Joked mature investor Roelof Botha at some level of a separate sit down-down with this editor closing 365 days: “[Some] of basically the most unhealthy phrases on this planet are: ‘I’m from the manager, and I’m right here to wait on.’”
It’s payment thinking via how worthy wealth sits exterior these mechanisms. Musk is payment fair over $1 trillion, after SpaceX’s IPO closing month made him the most foremost person to reach that establish. Forbes counted forty five current AI billionaires in its 2026 rankings by myself, payment a mixed $2.9 trillion, and that’s earlier than both Anthropic or OpenAI has long gone public. In that very same BI epic about Anthropic workers, BI notes that when Anthropic and OpenAI full their IPOs, their mixed workers will advantage ample wealth to amass in the case of a third of all homes within the San Francisco metro blueprint.
It feels unparalleled, but whether or no longer it represents an historic outrageous is a topic of some debate. The allotment of wealth held by the head 1% of U.S. households hit 31.7% within the third quarter of closing 365 days, a chronicle for the rationale that Federal Reserve began monitoring the solutions in 1989, and roughly equal to what the diversified 90% of households exterior the head decile held mixed.
That’s soundless under the forty five% the head 1% commanded at the Gilded Age height in 1916. However narrow the lens to the tippy top, and the image flips. Famend economist Gabriel Zucman calculates that at the height of the Gilded Age, spherical 1910, The US’s four excellent fortunes were payment a mixed 4% of U.S. GDP. On the present time, that very same sliver of the inhabitants — now 19 households as an different of 4 — is payment 14%.
Rimer’s two paths, voluntary or forced, bear precedent from the closing time American wealth concentration reached this level. In 1889, at the height of the most foremost Gilded Age, Andrew Carnegie published an essay arguing that a rich man ought to soundless deal alongside with his fortune as a believe to be dispensed for the public ethical within his believe lifetime, calling it a shame to die affluent. That essay, “The Gospel of Wealth,” became the founding doc of contemporary philanthropy and the intellectual ancestor of the Giving Pledge.
It didn’t advantage off the diversified route for long, even though. By the mid-1930s, Louisiana Senator Huey Long had built a national following slack a program known as Portion Our Wealth, traumatic steep taxes on the rich to fund a assured profits for every American. Terrified about losing working-class toughen to Long, Franklin Roosevelt pushed via what the clicking known as the “soak-the-rich tax,” elevating the head marginal profits tax rate as excessive as seventy 9%. It redistributed much less than Long wanted, nevertheless it stays the clearest instance in American historical previous of politically forced redistribution arriving as soon as voluntary giving didn’t adequately handle the stress constructing under it.
None of right here’s news to Rimer, who has spent his profession in tech. What’s more uncommon to him is “the true heart of tech companies,” a fascination he traced to being a Stanford undergrad in 1984, when Apple discounted the most foremost Macintosh for college students and Steve Jobs and Apple’s diversified founders were, in his phrases, “heroes” for constructing one thing he felt became certainly ethical for the field.
What troubles him now, he stated, is listening to his believe young of us discuss obvious tech companies the plan an earlier period talked about defense contractors or cigarette makers.
Critics can also current that Rimer — as an investor in Anthropic and diversified tech companies — is a straight away beneficiary of the windfall he says will at closing ought to be shared. However he’d somewhat search his fellow beneficiaries desire to present a pair of of the money advantage than bear it taken from them. There’s a easy scheme to originate that and a laborious plan, and Rimer is making a bet on of us picking the easy one earlier than historical previous picks it for them.
In the event you aquire via links in our articles, we can also accomplish a small commission. This doesn’t affect our editorial independence.
