Warren urges taxes on AI companies, data centers

May 29, 2026

Summary

Sen. Elizabeth Warren said AI companies and data centers should face new taxes to fund investment in workers and families.

Why this matters

Warren’s proposal adds to the debate over how the U.S. should tax and regulate artificial intelligence as its economic impact grows. Her comments outline potential tax changes affecting AI companies, investors, and workers.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., said the artificial intelligence industry should face new taxes, including a potential tax on the energy used by AI data centers.

“It’s time to tax AI and invest in people,” Warren wrote in an opinion piece published by Time.

“Rethinking our tax code must also include going to the source: that means taxing AI companies directly, which can start with taxing AI data centers,” she wrote. “By imposing a reasonable excise tax on the energy used by data centers, families could recoup some of the gains of AI, while America continues to stay competitive in the AI race. A well-designed tax would focus on the companies that can afford it and scale with AI’s impact: the bigger the data center, the more they pay.”

Warren also wrote that policymakers should consider broader tax proposals targeting AI.

“We can’t be afraid to consider even bigger and bolder proposals to tax AI too, including ideas that sound radical today but may quickly become common sense,” she wrote.

“Right now, companies pay payroll taxes for their workers but get tax breaks for investing in technology—effectively, a tax penalty for hiring human beings and a tax break for buying equipment. In an AI world, that means our tax code is incentivizing corporations to fire people and replace them with AI. That’s wrong. We need to level the playing field by raising taxes on corporations and capital gains and closing corporate loopholes,” Warren wrote.

Warren also called for a wealth tax on affluent individuals.

“AI billionaires are running the same playbook: get rich off massive stock valuations and avoid paying the taxes that would be owed if those funds were earned as salary. If it wasn’t clear before, there’s no question in a world of AI: we need a wealth tax,” she wrote.

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