OpenAI has proposed giving the US government a 5 percent equity stake in the company, worth approximately $42.6 billion at its most recent $852 billion valuation, as part of an effort to defuse mounting political pressure in Washington and give the American public a direct financial interest in the AI industry's growth.
The Financial Times broke the story Thursday, citing two people familiar with what were described as early conversations. OpenAI declined to comment.
CEO Sam Altman has reportedly argued the arrangement is the best way to share the upside of AI with ordinary Americans, echoing language from OpenAI's April policy document that called for a "public wealth fund" giving every citizen a stake in AI-driven economic growth regardless of whether they are invested in financial markets.
Altman has discussed the proposal with President Trump and senior administration officials including Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent.
Trump met with Altman at the G7 summit in Evian-les-Bains, France on June 17.
The broader proposal calls for other leading US AI companies, Anthropic, Google and Meta, to cede similar 5 percent stakes to the government through a sovereign wealth fund vehicle.
Whether any of those companies would agree is unclear.
The Trump administration and Anthropic have not discussed a government stake, a source familiar with the matter said Thursday. Any deal would likely require an act of Congress.
The context matters. Washington has been growing increasingly wary of advanced AI models, the government recently held up the release of OpenAI's GPT 5.6 and required Anthropic to temporarily limit access to its most advanced models.
OpenAI has confidentially filed IPO paperwork with the SEC, though advisers are weighing a delay until 2027.
The 5 percent proposal is, at minimum, a political signal: we want you as a partner, not a regulator.
Trump has previously described government ownership of AI companies as "a beautiful thing" that would make Americans "partners in this revolution." He took a 10 percent stake in Intel last August for $8.9 billion, now worth $67 billion.