Neil Rimer Predicts a Return of Investment in Artificial Intelligence Technologies

In late May, during a conversation I had with Neil Rimer in Athens, he made a remark that has stayed with me ever since. At a bustling new technology festival taking place in the city, he discussed the growing wealth generated by artificial intelligence and expressed a strong belief that some form of wealth redistribution would eventually occur. He continued by saying that this redistribution might happen voluntarily or through external pressure, but it was inevitable, adding that he hoped it would occur on a voluntary basis. He also noted that technology industry leaders could play a key role in ensuring such redistribution came to pass.

Had this statement come from most people, it might have been considered typical populist rhetoric. However, coming from Rimer, who is co-founder of Index Ventures—one of the most successful venture capital firms over the past three decades—it sounded particularly striking when delivered in public.

Rimer stepped back from day-to-day investment activities in 2021 and now spends much of his time in Athens, his wife’s hometown where his children hold Greek citizenship. He appeared at our interview wearing a wrinkled button-down shirt and jeans, rather than the tailored jackets and fine knitwear often seen among his peers. Despite this difference in style, Index Ventures has achieved outstanding returns in recent years: the firm has raised approximately $15 billion from external investors since its establishment, and last year’s exits, including Figma’s initial public offering and Google’s acquisition of cybersecurity firm Wiz, reportedly generated around $9 billion for Index.

Rimer has found ways to give back to society. He serves on the board of Endeavor Greece, an organization that supports entrepreneurs in emerging markets, and he served as chairman of Human Rights Watch from 2019 to 2025. In late 2021, he, along with his father and two brothers, donated $13 million to McGill University to help renovate a campus building, which is now known as the Rimer Building. They also established a new Institute for Indigenous Research and Knowledges at that location.

Given his comments on wealth redistribution, it might seem odd that he is advocating for giving back at this time. The Giving Pledge, an initiative launched in 2010 by Warren Buffett and Bill Gates aimed at encouraging billionaires to donate half of their wealth to charitable causes, is becoming increasingly irrelevant. According to a March report in The New York Times, only 113 families signed up in the first five years of the program, that number dropped to 72, then to 43, and by 2024 there were just four signatories. The article highlighted how philanthropy among some of the wealthiest tech executives has fallen out of fashion. (It’s worth noting that Elon Musk, the world’s richest person, has stated that his businesses “are philanthropy.”)

This trend extends beyond the Giving Pledge. According to the Stanford Social Innovation Review, total charitable giving in the United States reached a record $592.5 billion in 2024, but the number of Americans actually making donations has declined for five consecutive years, dropping by 4.5% in 2024 alone. In 2000, two-thirds of households donated regularly, while that figure has now fallen to roughly half. Data from Bank of America and Lilly Family School shows that even affluent households are giving less, with donation rates dropping from 90% in 2017 to 81% last year.

This pattern is also evident in Index Ventures’ own portfolio, which includes Anthropic. Business Insider recently asked financial planner Alex Caswell whether his newly wealthy clients, many of whom are Anthropic employees who are advocates of effective altruism, planned to donate a significant portion of their wealth. Caswell explained that while Anthropic matches employee donations up to 25% of their equity to charitable organizations, and some of his clients have taken advantage of this match, most were not focusing on philanthropy as part of their long-term plans. Instead, they were concentrating on angel investing or starting their own businesses. “That’s what I’m observing more often than a desire to become philanthropists,” he told the outlet.

Not surprisingly, the lack of voluntary giving is prompting efforts to enforce wealth redistribution through legislation. California voters will decide this year whether to approve a one-time 5% wealth tax targeting the state’s billionaires. Some individuals, including Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page, have already moved their primary residences to South Florida to avoid being affected by the tax.

OpenAI is reportedly considering going public in 2027, and one possible reason for this decision, among others, is that if the proposed tax passes, net worth would be calculated based on an individual’s worldwide assets as of the end of the current calendar year.

As expected, there is strong opposition to any form of wealth redistribution on this scale, including from Governor Gavin Newsom and economists who point out that many industrialized countries have abolished similar wealth taxes since 1990 after wealthy residents moved away as a result of those taxes.

Other proposed solutions are just as controversial. OpenAI has reportedly discussed offering the federal government a 5% equity stake, an idea that CEO Sam Altman has described as a way to share the benefits of artificial intelligence with the public. However, critics view it as a strategy to gain political support in Washington. In either case, Silicon Valley has historically been reluctant to involve the government in its corporate structures. As veteran investor Roelof Botha joked during a separate interview with this editor last year, “Some of the most dangerous words in the world are: ‘I’m from the government, and I’m here to help.’”

It is worth considering how much wealth remains outside these formal mechanisms. After SpaceX’s initial public offering last month, Elon Musk’s net worth exceeded $1 trillion, making him the first person to reach that figure. Forbes listed 45 new AI billionaires in its 2026 rankings, with a combined wealth of $2.9 trillion—this figure does not include potential earnings from Anthropic or OpenAI once they go public. The same Business Insider article about Anthropic employees noted that once both companies complete their IPOs, their combined employees will possess enough wealth to purchase nearly a third of all homes in the San Francisco metropolitan area.

While this situation may seem unprecedented, whether it represents an extreme historical anomaly is still debated. In the third quarter of last year, the share of wealth held by the top 1% of U.S. households reached 31.7%, the highest level since the Federal Reserve began tracking this data in 1989. That amount is roughly equal to the combined wealth held by the remaining 90% of households outside the top decile.

Still, this figure is lower than the 45% held by the top 1% during the peak of the Gilded Age in 1916. However, when looking at the very wealthiest segment of the population, the picture changes. Economist Gabriel Zucman estimates that around 1910, during the height of the Gilded Age, the four largest fortunes in America combined accounted for 4% of the country’s GDP. Today, that same small group—now consisting of 19 households instead of four—holds 14% of GDP.

Rimer’s two possible paths for wealth redistribution—voluntary or forced—have historical precedents from a time when U.S. wealth concentration reached similar levels. In 1889, at the peak of the first Gilded Age, Andrew Carnegie published an essay titled “The Gospel of Wealth,” in which he argued that wealthy individuals should treat their fortunes as trusts to be distributed for public benefit during their lifetimes, calling it a shame to die wealthy. This essay became the foundational text of modern philanthropy and served as an intellectual precursor to the Giving Pledge.

However, that voluntary approach did not last long. By the mid-1930s, Louisiana Senator Huey Long built a large following behind a program called Share Our Wealth, which called for high taxes on the wealthy to fund guaranteed income for all Americans. Fearing that working-class support might shift to Long, President Franklin Roosevelt implemented what the press referred to as the “soak-the-rich tax,” raising the top marginal income tax rate to 79%. Although this measure redistributed less wealth than Long had hoped for, it remains the clearest example in American history of politically mandated wealth redistribution occurring after voluntary giving failed to address the growing pressure.

None of this is new information to Rimer, who has spent his entire career in the technology industry. What interests him more is what he calls “the moral center of tech companies.” This fascination dates back to his time as a Stanford undergraduate in 1984, when Apple offered discounted prices on the first Macintosh for students. At that time, Steve Jobs and Apple’s other founders were, in his words, “heroes” for creating something he believed would genuinely benefit the world.

What concerns him now, he said, is hearing his own children speak about certain tech companies in the same way earlier generations spoke about defense contractors or cigarette manufacturers.

Critics may argue that Rimer, as an investor in companies like Anthropic, is directly benefiting from the windfall he believes will eventually need to be shared. But he prefers to see his fellow beneficiaries choose to donate some of their wealth voluntarily rather than have it taken from them. He believes there is an easy way and a hard way to achieve this, and he hopes people will opt for the easier path before history forces them to do so.