The Unconditional Income Study, which began in 2019 and stands as one of the biggest direct income programs to date, finally released on Monday research related to its findings. The project found that, in general, distributing $1,000 monthly to recipients in Illinois and Texas provided improved financial flexibility without disincentivizing workforce participation. But just as interesting as the research itself is the group behind the work: The study was backed by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, making it just the latest—and perhaps the largest—experiment in universal basic income (UBI) to come out of Silicon Valley. 

Before Altman was making headlines there was Andrew Yang, the former tech executive and onetime candidate in the 2020 presidential election, who built his political platform on a “freedom dividend” of $1,000 to offset the job displacement from automation. Y Combinator first announced its Basic Income Project in 2016, and the Destination: Home program (which has about nine pilots running) gets a third of their funding from the tech world. Meanwhile, Both Elon Musk and Twitter cofounder Jack Dorsey have also expressed their support for UBI. 

Still, despite dozens of tests and backing from some of the biggest names in American industry, UBI has yet to catch on—at least not on a macro level. 

Why is Silicon Valley so interested in UBI?

UBI has long been a popular talking point for many tech giants. Much of their enthusiasm has to do with the products they are creating; if automation and artificial intelligence is set to replace jobs, UBI could be necessary to sustaining personal economic livelihood. 

These forward-looking statements of UBI approval are spread across Silicon Valley. Yang argued that UBI payments would “enable millions of Americans to meaningfully transition in the time of economic transformation, including that brought by AI.” Altman, who donated to Yang’s campaign, called UBI an “obvious conclusion.” 

But Karl Widerquist, an economist at Georgetown University-Qatar, takes issue with such framing. “They tend to focus on the more fanciful, sci-fi becomes reality aspect of it,” Widerquist says. “[That’s] still in the future when we have all these commanding reasons in the present why we should have basic income now.”

Silicon Valley has also seen a rightward shift during the 2024 presidential election, with many leading VCs and executives preferring the small government approach promised by Donald Trump.