In brief
- OpenAI has proposed handing the U.S. government a 5% stake worth roughly $42.6 billion, based on its $852 billion March 2026 valuation, according to the Financial Times.
- Sam Altman pitched the idea directly to President Trump, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, and wants Anthropic, Google, and Meta to contribute similar stakes.
- The talks follow a month of escalating government intervention in frontier AI releases—including a delayed GPT-5.6 rollout and a temporary export ban on Anthropic’s top models.
OpenAI has been in talks with the Donald Trump administration about handing the U.S. government a 5% stake in the company, the Financial Times reported, citing two people familiar with the discussions. At OpenAI’s $852 billion valuation from its March funding round, that slice is worth roughly $42.6 billion.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman’s pitch frames this as democratizing AI’s economic upside—the best way to ensure Americans share in the industry’s growth. He raised the idea directly with President Trump, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, according to the FT.
The proposed structure would model a sovereign wealth vehicle like the Alaska Permanent Fund, a state-owned fund established in 1976 to invest surplus oil revenues and pay annual dividends to state residents.
The proposal doesn’t stop at OpenAI. Altman reportedly wants other major U.S. AI developers—Anthropic, Google, Meta—to cede a similar 5% to the government through the same vehicle. None of those companies have signaled any interest in joining as of yet.
OpenAI launched GPT-5.6 in limited form just days earlier, after the White House’s Office of the National Cyber Director asked for a restricted rollout while officials develop a testing framework for frontier AI. That was the second government intervention of the month—Anthropic spent most of June in lockdown on Mythos 5 and Fable 5 while under emergency export controls, after the Defense Department previously labeled the company a “supply chain risk,” before access was restored this week.
OpenAI has been more supportive than Anthropic when it comes to its deals with the U.S. government, signing partnerships where Anthropic refused.
Equity has become the administration’s preferred tool for managing tech relationships. The government took a 9.9% stake in Intel last August, paying $8.9 billion by converting CHIPS Act grants into shares at $20.47 each—a position now worth well over $50 billion. AMD and Nvidia agreed to hand over 15% of their China chip revenues in exchange for export licenses. Trump said in May he should have negotiated a larger stake in Intel.
The FT characterized the discussions as conceptual and early-stage, adding that any arrangement could require Congressional approval.
The deal, if it materializes, would mark the first time Washington holds equity in a private AI company. For OpenAI—navigating a confidential IPO filing and a probe from a coalition of 42 state attorneys general—the deal may be worth it.
Senator Bernie Sanders, who met with Altman in recent weeks, is pushing a bill that would require the largest AI companies to surrender 50% of their equity to a public fund, with proceeds flowing to Americans as direct payments. Both OpenAI and Anthropic have filed confidentially for IPOs, meaning that any potential government stake agreed now would precede the ownership dilution that comes with a public float.
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