OpenAI Offers 5% Stake to US Government

OpenAI has floated giving the federal government a 5% equity stake in the company, a move that would value Washington's position at roughly $42.6 billion and could reshape how the United States treats artificial intelligence as a matter of national economic policy rather than pure private enterprise.

In Brief

• OpenAI CEO Sam Altman discussed the proposal with President Trump, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent
• The 5% stake is valued against OpenAI's $852 billion post money valuation from its March funding round
• The plan would ask Anthropic, Google and Meta to contribute similar equity slices into a sovereign fund modeled on the Alaska Permanent Fund
• Any such arrangement would likely need congressional approval, according to CNN
• Both OpenAI and Anthropic have already filed confidential paperwork for public listings

How the Sovereign Fund Structure Would Work

The framework Altman has sketched out treats equity contribution as a shared obligation among the largest American AI developers rather than a one off concession from OpenAI alone. Each participating firm would hand over 5% of its equity into a government administered vehicle, echoing the Alaska Permanent Fund's model of channeling resource revenue into direct payments for residents. Instead of oil royalties, the underlying asset here is AI equity value, with proceeds theoretically distributed to the broader public. Whether Anthropic, Google or Meta would actually sign on remains an open question, and none has publicly committed.

Why Washington Is Already Warming to This Idea

There is a template already in place. Last August the government took a 10% stake in Intel through an $8.9 billion investment in common stock, establishing that direct federal equity positions in strategically important tech companies are no longer unthinkable. Trump himself said in May that the Intel terms should have been tougher on the company's side, suggesting an appetite in the administration for larger, not smaller, government stakes going forward. That precedent gives Altman's proposal more political traction than it might otherwise carry.

Sanders has been pursuing a far more aggressive version of the same concept. His plan would transfer 50% of equity in leading AI companies into a public fund, complete with board seats, voting power and a universal dividend paid out to Americans. Altman's own April proposal aimed narrower, describing a fund that would take positions in AI firms and return proceeds specifically to Americans without existing market exposure.

Regulatory Pressure Is Already Shaping AI Rollouts

The equity proposal lands amid heightened federal scrutiny of frontier AI deployment. OpenAI delayed the full public release of its GPT 5.6 model last week at the government's request. Anthropic, meanwhile, had suspended foreign national access to its Fable 5 and Mythos 5 models over national security concerns before the government lifted those restrictions this week. Both companies have also filed confidential IPO paperwork, a step that would eventually put their shares in front of retail investors and add a public market dimension to any government equity position they hold.

What Happens If Rivals Refuse to Participate

The proposal's fate hinges on whether Anthropic, Google and Meta view a mandatory equity contribution as an acceptable cost of doing business in a more federally entangled AI sector, or as a precedent they would rather fight in Congress. OpenAI and the White House have not responded to requests for comment, leaving the scope and legal mechanism of any eventual deal, and whether it survives legislative scrutiny, unresolved for now.