A proposal under congressional scrutiny
Comer requested draft legislation, risk assessments, records about outside participants and safety reviews, along with reportedly internal AI chat logs. His letter sets a November 9 deadline for Meyer's office to provide materials covering January 1, 2025, through the date of the request. The governor's office said it is reviewing the letter.
The proposal has not become law. It would establish a corporate category called the Artificial Intelligence Company, or AIC, in which an AI agent could manage daily operations without regular human decisions. Comer's central concern is who would bear responsibility if such a business injured a consumer or violated regulations.
According to Comer's letter, the 36-page legislative draft was released in late June 2026 and reportedly could be introduced in the General Assembly in 2027.
How the companies and sandbox would work
Each AIC would have a single member, either an individual or an organization, responsible for maintaining adequate funding. The company could hold property, make contracts and bring or face lawsuits. Banking would be excluded, but other lawful business purposes would be permitted.
The member would receive broad protection against liability for conduct by the AIC or those acting at its direction. That protection would be part of a limited regulatory sandbox, not a permanent authorization for unrestricted operation.
Bloomberg Law reported that state officials and outside experts would oversee a 30-month sandbox. The draft distinguishes the program's duration from each participant's testing period: participants would have to finish testing within 24 months after receiving a registration number, while the program would end 30 months after the implementing section took effect.
A Sandbox Committee chaired by Delaware's secretary of state would decide admission. Its membership would include the attorney general, the chief justice of the Delaware Supreme Court and the state AI Commission's chair, along with two attorneys and two AI experts appointed by the governor and two appointees of the secretary of state. Four state legislators would serve without voting rights.
For disputes connected to sandbox transactions, the draft would designate Delaware's Court of Chancery as the exclusive forum. Doing business with a sandbox-authorized AIC would be deemed consent to personal jurisdiction in Delaware.
A separate reported requirement would make AICs disclose their AI-operated status to counterparties, though that provision has not been confirmed in primary draft language.
Liability protections and their limits
The draft reportedly provides exceptions to the member's liability shield for fraud, inadequate capitalization, willful unlawful conduct and negligent operation beyond the company's stated purpose. It remains unresolved how courts would apply concepts such as willfulness or knowledge to an AI system's output.
In a July 2026 Fortune op-ed, Delaware Secretary of State Charuni Patibanda-Sanchez and John Nay described enforcement powers that would allow officials to suspend an AIC, withdraw its authorization or petition the Court of Chancery to dissolve it. They said the liability shield would apply only within the sandbox and that criminal and consumer-protection laws would remain fully applicable. The draft bill also expressly subjects eligible sandbox applicants to those state laws.
Supporters argue that a separate legal identity would give plaintiffs and regulators an identifiable entity to pursue, rather than leaving responsibility dispersed among developers, a model supplier and an investment vehicle.
Comer has raised the opposite concern: investors might retain the financial benefits while shifting responsibility for failures to an algorithm. His committee's statement warned that the proposal could shield AI companies and investors from responsibility for "reckless harmful actions."
Who developed the framework
The effort follows House Joint Resolution 7, which Meyer signed on July 23, 2025. It instructed the state AI Commission and Patibanda-Sanchez to develop a regulatory sandbox for agentic AI and submit written findings and recommendations by January 2, 2026.
Comer's letter says the commission sent Meyer a two-page report dated December 22, 2025. According to the letter, that report did not describe commission efforts to evaluate the proposal's potential safety issues, harms or risks, or consultations with independent outside experts. That criticism concerns what the report documented, rather than establishing that no such work occurred.
The framework is being developed through a public-private partnership led by AI startup Norm Ai, according to Comer's letter. The letter identifies John Mark Zeberkiewicz, a partner at Delaware's largest law firm, Richards, Layton & Finger PA, as the legislation's principal drafter.
Comer said the inquiry could inform federal legislation affecting state AI initiatives.
