Topline
OpenAI is in talks with the Trump administration about potentially granting the U.S. government a 5% stake in the company, according to the Financial Times, in an apparent bid to address concerns about giving the public a financial stake in AI’s success amid fears that it could trigger major job losses.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has reportedly engaged in talks with President Donald Trump and other White House officials about this proposal.
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Key Facts
Citing two unnamed sources, the Financial Times reported that the ChatGPT-maker had held preliminary talks with the U.S. government on this matter.
The purported proposal being pushed by OpenAI also calls for other U.S. AI giants to grant the U.S. government a 5% stake—although it’s unclear whether any other company would be willing to agree.
The proposal could also help boost OpenAI’s relationships with the Trump administration at a time when the White House has increasingly stepped in to regulate the rollout of advanced models such as Anthropic’s Mythos and OpenAI’s GPT-5.6.
The company and the government had held only “conceptual” talks so far, with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman engaging directly with President Donald Trump, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, the FT report said.
News Peg
According to the report, the proposal floated by OpenAI seeks to replicate the Alaska Permanent Fund, a sovereign wealth fund established in 1976 to invest the state’s surplus oil revenues. The fund pays out an annual dividend to the state’s residents, and as of May 31, it was valued at nearly $91.2 billion. It’s unclear which other companies would be on board to contribute to the fund, but OpenAI’s key competitors include Anthropic, Google and Meta. It’s also unclear if semiconductor giants like Nvidia, Micron and AMD—which have also benefited from the AI boom—would be expected to join.
what has openAi said previously about profit sharing
In April, OpenAI published a document outlining what it said was a new industrial policy to deal with the impact of so-called “superintelligence,” which it described as AI sthat can outperform even the smartest humans. Among other things, the policy document called for the creation of a Public Wealth Fund that would give the American people an automatic stake in AI companies and infrastructure—even if they are not investing directly in financial markets. The document also included other proposals including four-day work weeks, raising corporate tax rates to compensate for loss in income taxes and taxing businesses that replace human workers with AI.