Universal basic income: it was one unlikely proposition on which Elon Musk, Marc Benioff, Sam Altman, Chris Hughes, and social justice activists could all agree, at least for a moment. Automation was coming for work, they said, and a safety net would be necessary. A decade on, UBI, as these no-strings-attached cash payments are commonly known, is arguably needed even more, with AI threatening to take over white-collar jobs.

“UBI to me represents a floor that people can stand on,” Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey said in 2020, “while they are learning how to transition into this new world.” 

The Bay Area became ground zero for this policy trend. Between 2019 and 2025, more than $65 million in public funding, as well as donations from Google, the Silicon Valley Community Foundation, Omidyar Network, and others, has flowed into UBI pilot programs in the region. At least 10,000 people in the Bay Area have received some amount of cash.

But the utopian UBI policy Dorsey and others envisioned has not arrived. The test pilots limited recipients based on income, housing status, family composition, race, and gender. This wasn’t just to see if UBI worked; it was a fundamental reconsideration of basic income as suited only to the most vulnerable. Proponents say that’s what makes it work. 

More than 50 pilot programs and research studies have concluded or are winding down. But the narrowed scope has made UBI more likely to crash out than make the leap to policy.

Basic income programs in the Bay have focused on transgender youth, single mothers, and young Black people, among other demographics. They have been, by design, not universal. No program has tested a cohort that reflects a random sample of the population. Even Altman’s OpenResearch project in Illinois and Texas limited its cohort to extremely low-income families. (Altman has since floated the idea that instead of cash, participants could receive compensation in the form of AI computing time.)

That distinction is necessary for the money to make the most impact, say proponents of the shift.

“Basic income gives everyone an anchor to life, but that does not mean that every individual needs the same amount to achieve that security,” said Guy Standing, a professor at the University of London who focuses on UBI. 

He sees the original vision of UBI as fundamentally flawed. As robots (and large language models) are taking over jobs, it is those with the lowest socioeconomic status who will be hurt the most and need the extra cash boost, according to guaranteed income advocates. 

“There are some disparities that are based on race or gender or other demographics,” said Shafeka Hashash, director of Cash Initiatives for the Economic Security Project, a nonprofit founded by Chris Hughes in 2016. 

It sounds a lot like existing welfare programs. 

“I think people who are in favor of these policies think that they’re serving them better, but it’s not a different service. It’s just giving money,” said Jesse Rothstein, UC Berkeley professor of public policy and economics.

Where basic income differs, then, is in its guarantee — not requiring applicants to pass eligibility requirements. “So a guaranteed program has the benefit that it would actually reach people in much higher share — the people who need it.” 

That’s not fundamentally different but no less necessary, said Sukhi Samra, executive director of Mayors for a Guaranteed Income. “A guaranteed income should supplement existing programs, not replace them,” she said. “It’s a fight for both at the same time, not an either/or.”

Studies from the Bay Area and elsewhere show that the targeted and short-term payments to specific groups have reduced economic stress, improved physical health and family relationships, and led to better housing outcomes, particularly for those living on the brink.

But while the demographic focus of guaranteed income may make the cash more effective, it also makes those programs more susceptible to critique and attack.

When Ramses Rain left a career in the film industry in 2022 to go back to school and find a more stable job, he wasn’t sure how he was going to pay his bills.

When he learned of the Black Economic Equity Movement, he thought it was “too good to be true.” The program gave $500 a month to an initial cohort of 300 Black young adults in San Francisco and Oakland between 2023 and 2025. Rain was chosen. 

When he got his first check, he felt a weight lift off his shoulders. 

Along with the money, Rain and fellow participants had access to financial planning. To prove the pilot’s impact, program staff asked participants to keep a diary of how the payments changed their financial, emotional, and physical health. Rain said he felt a greater sense of calm. The extra money went toward rent while he focused on his career.

Then President Donald Trump was reelected. In March, BEEM was among the thousands of research projects that lost funding from the National Institutes of Health.

“So-called diversity, equity, and inclusion studies are often used to support unlawful discrimination on the basis of race and other protected characteristics, which harms the health of Americans,” said the NIH letter of grant suspension. NIH funding had been the source of a majority of BEEM’s budget.

“I had to gather everyone around and send them home,” said Sheri Lippman, a UCSF epidemiologist and principal investigator responsible for processing BEEM’s data. In order to keep checks flowing to participants, BEEM took the hit on the administrative side. “It was heartbreaking.” 

If researchers want to study the impact of cash supplementation on communities most impacted by poverty, that funding is no longer likely to come from the federal government.  

Conservative organizations have passed legislation that bans guaranteed income in six states. The most recent bill terminated a program serving more than 100 low-income families in Iowa. Republican Rep. Steven Holt called the program “socialism on steroids.” 

“It is so hypocritical because at the same time that the Trump administration is taking an axe to the social safety system, they are also rolling out policies that include direct cash — the DOGE dividends and the Trump Account,” said Hashash, referring to policies floated this year by Trump and Elon Musk. “They are doing this for racist and ideological reasons.” 

Following a lawsuit by California and other states, the NIH funding was reinstated in July. But BEEM is still in the crosshairs of anti-DEI activists outside government. In 2023, conservative lobbying group Californians for Equal Rights Foundation filed a lawsuit against San Francisco saying that BEEM and other guaranteed income programs are“ unconstitutional” for providing aid to specific groups.

Now Lippman and the rest of the program’s staff are playing catch-up — and planning for their next fight. 

For Rain, the benefits of BEEM have long outlasted the money. The stability he achieved in the program, he says, gave him the opportunity to learn programming. He now works for a self-driving car company and hopes to be an advocate for UBI. But he’s not a fan of “the tech-bro vision” of the policy, which he sees as a way to undo and replace the social safety net. 

“You cannot brag about how rich your country is and then have a lot of your citizens be poor,” he said. “This is not about giving people money and taking away every other form of assistance. This needs to be about every person’s right to live a good life.” 

Whether demographic-exclusive basic income programs will be able to help more people like Rain is an open question. Samra remains hopeful. 

“We know that this administration is very anti-data, but as a movement, we have produced sufficient research to back our work,” she said. “We are going to keep going. And make sure we are realistic about where we are going to win.”

Hashash said UBI programs may take DEI-coded language out of their applications and descriptions, at least for now. This would, ironically, bring them closer to the original utopian “universal” ideal — a UBI fantasy that, despite tens of millions of dollars spent, hasn’t been tried yet.