OpenAI Proposes 5% Government Equity Stake in $852bn Bet to Reshape AI Regulation
OpenAI has opened preliminary discussions with the Trump administration about granting the US government a 5% equity stake in the company, the Financial Times first reported on July 2, citing two people familiar with the talks. Based on the AI lab's record-breaking March funding round, which locked in a post-money valuation of $852 billion, that single 5% slice would be worth an estimated $42.6 billion. CEO Sam Altman reportedly argued the move was the best way to share the upside of artificial intelligence with the public, framing government ownership as a democratic dividend from the technology's ascent.
Altman's proposal extends well beyond OpenAI. According to the Financial Times, the structure he has floated would require each of the largest US AI developers — potentially including Anthropic, Google, and Meta — to cede identical 5% stakes into a sovereign wealth vehicle modelled on the Alaska Permanent Fund, which pays annual oil-wealth dividends directly to state residents. Altman has raised the idea directly with President Donald Trump, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. The White House did not respond to requests for comment, and CNBC reported that the Trump administration and Anthropic have not discussed the government taking a stake in that company.
The proposal arrives at a fraught political moment for frontier AI. The discussions are described by the Financial Times as conceptual and early-stage, and any formalised arrangement would likely require an act of Congress. Washington has nonetheless been sharpening its grip on advanced AI in recent weeks: the Commerce Department temporarily applied export controls to Anthropic's Mythos and Fable models before lifting them on June 30, and the government delayed the full public launch of OpenAI's GPT-5.6 pending official approval. According to CNBC, pressure has been mounting on major US AI firms as Washington grows increasingly wary of cybersecurity vulnerabilities and intensifying competition from cheaper Chinese open-source models.
The government's appetite for AI equity is not without precedent. The administration took a 10% stake in Intel after an $8.9 billion investment in the chipmaker's common stock in August 2025. President Trump has described the US taking ownership stakes in AI giants as something that would make Americans partners in the technology revolution. The proposal also faces competition from the left: Senator Bernie Sanders filed the American AI Sovereign Wealth Fund Act in June, seeking 50% of the voting shares of US AI companies through a fund his office valued at $7 trillion, enough to pay every American an annual dividend of $1,000.
The geopolitical ripples from even a conceptual government stake are already reverberating beyond Washington. A Forrester analyst cited by The Guardian warned that a pre-IPO government stake might calm US investor nerves about regulation but would prompt other jurisdictions to demand analogous arrangements, forcing European and Asia-Pacific buyers to reassess data-sovereignty assumptions about American AI providers. OpenAI has confidentially filed draft IPO paperwork with the SEC, with advisers reportedly weighing a delay until 2027. As governments from Geneva to Beijing scrutinise the deal, the question for the global technology industry is no longer whether states will own a piece of AI — but how much, and on whose terms.