OpenAI Proposes 5% Government Stake to Ease Trump Administration Pressure

The pitch on the table

OpenAI has proposed handing the US government a 5% stake in the company, the Financial Times reported Thursday, as the AI lab tries to defuse mounting political pressure in Washington. At OpenAI's reported $852 billion valuation, a 5% holding would be worth roughly $42.6 billion.

The structure isn't a direct government purchase of shares. According to the FT, citing two people familiar with the talks, CEO Sam Altman and other OpenAI executives have suggested that leading US AI firms donate 5% of their equity to a vehicle modeled on the Alaska Permanent Fund, the state-owned corporation that pays annual dividends to Alaska residents from oil revenue. The idea is to let the American public share in AI's upside without a government purchase or a new tax.

Altman has discussed the arrangement directly with President Trump, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, the FT reported. He has also spoken with Senator Bernie Sanders in recent weeks, according to the same report.

Why OpenAI is doing this now

The offer lands amid a run of friction between OpenAI, Anthropic, and Washington. Last week, OpenAI delayed the full public launch of GPT-5.6 at the US government's request. That followed an even sharper episode: the administration ordered Anthropic to suspend foreign access to its frontier models, Claude Fable 5 and Claude Mythos 5, over export-control concerns, before restoring access on July 1 after Anthropic addressed the government's safety questions.

Set against that backdrop, offering equity reads as an attempt to buy political goodwill at a moment when Washington is scrutinizing AI labs over cybersecurity risk, competition from cheaper Chinese open-source models, and mounting public anxiety about job losses tied to automation.

For OpenAI specifically, the timing also lines up with a highly sensitive stretch: both OpenAI and Anthropic have confidentially filed for US IPOs, and any openai ipo would happen under a level of political attention neither company had to navigate two years ago. Handing over equity now, before a public listing prices the company, costs relatively little in dollar terms and buys leverage in Washington heading into that process.

The rest of the industry hasn't signed on

OpenAI's proposal explicitly calls for other major US AI companies, including Anthropic, Google, and Meta, to hand over similar stakes through the same sovereign-wealth-style vehicle. None have agreed to do so, and it's unclear whether they will. The Financial Times reported that Anthropic was caught off guard by Trump's earlier public comments on the idea and, according to a person close to the company, isn't in active talks with the administration about providing equity.

Anthropic has instead floated a separate concept it calls a 'digital dividend,' funded through taxes on the AI sector rather than a direct equity donation. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang told the Associated Press he hasn't had a dialogue with the White House on the topic at all.

That split matters. A single company volunteering equity is a PR move. An industry-wide equity transfer to a government-linked fund is a structural change to how AI companies are owned, and getting competitors who see no upside in matching OpenAI's offer to go along is a much harder sell.

This isn't a new idea, and it isn't simple

Altman first pitched a version of government ownership to the administration in early 2025, and OpenAI formalized the concept in an April 2026 policy document proposing a 'Public Wealth Fund' that would hold diversified AI-linked assets and pay out returns to citizens, similar in spirit to universal basic capital proposals gaining traction on both sides of the aisle.

Trump has separately floated direct government equity stakes in AI companies, calling the idea 'a beautiful thing' that would make the public 'partners in this revolution.' The administration has already taken direct stakes in other strategic industries, including Intel, IBM, and several critical-minerals and quantum computing firms, using tools like the CHIPS Act and Defense Production Act conversions. That intel government stake precedent is the closest existing model for how a deal with an AI lab might actually get structured.

But AI companies are a different animal. Semafor has reported that Trump's own cabinet is split on structure: Treasury Secretary Bessent reportedly favors channeling equity into individual 'Trump Accounts,' while Commerce Secretary Lutnick prefers routing it through a sovereign-wealth-style fund. No decision has been made, and a CEO meeting Trump previewed earlier this year still hasn't happened.

Practical obstacles are significant. Congress would likely need to authorize any government entity to hold equity in private AI companies. Governance questions, such as who sits on the fund's board, whether the government gets voting rights, and how an 'AI dividend' would physically reach American households, remain unresolved. AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler has voiced skepticism, and the Cato Institute's Jennifer Huddleston has warned that government stakes in specific companies would 'intrude' on the free market.

What operators and builders should watch

• Whether Anthropic, Google, or Meta signal any willingness to match OpenAI's offer, since a one-company deal changes little structurally.
• Whether Congress moves on authorization, since no government entity currently has clear legal footing to hold equity in a private AI lab.
• How this interacts with the openai ipo and Anthropic's own confidential IPO filing, since a government equity stake would need to be resolved before either company can go public.
• Whether the administration uses the same leverage it applied in the Anthropic export-control episode elsewhere in the industry, since that dispute showed Washington is willing to restrict model access to extract concessions.
• Senator Sanders' competing proposal for a mandatory 50% equity tax on AI labs, which points to a much more aggressive version of the same underlying idea if the voluntary approach stalls.

Sources