OpenAI reportedly discussed giving Uncle Sam a 5% stake
CNBC ● Covered by 2 sources
OpenAI floated giving the US government a 5% stake worth about $42.6 billion. It's part of a plan to put Washington in every top AI firm, not just OpenAI.
Based on reporting by CNBC — read the original for the full story.
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Sam Altman has apparently been quietly pitching Washington on an idea that sounds almost too neat: let the government own a slice of OpenAI, and every other major AI company, through a single sovereign wealth-style vehicle. The Financial Times reported Thursday that OpenAI proposed a 5% government stake, which at the company's $852 billion valuation from March would run around $42.6 billion. That's not pocket change, even by AI-boom standards.
The pitch isn't new, exactly. CNBC reported last month that Altman first raised the concept with the Trump administration back in early 2025, and in April OpenAI floated a related idea, a public wealth fund that would hold pieces of AI companies and pass the gains on to citizens. What is new is the specific number and the fact that OpenAI wants this to be an industry-wide arrangement, with Google, Meta, and Anthropic all handing over similar stakes. None of those companies have confirmed they're on board. A source told CNBC that Anthropic and the administration haven't even discussed the idea.
The timing matters. Washington has grown noticeably twitchy about AI lately, partly over cybersecurity holes in these models and partly because Chinese open-source systems keep closing the capability gap while undercutting American pricing. Anthropic just went through its own scare, briefly losing export clearance for its Mythos and Fable models before getting cleared to restore access this week after addressing policymakers' safety concerns. Handing the government equity looks like it could double as insurance against exactly this kind of regulatory whiplash.
There's precedent for the government taking a bite out of a tech company, though usually not one this friendly. The Trump administration already holds a 10% stake in Intel after an $8.9 billion investment last August, and Trump himself said in May he wished he'd negotiated for more. He's called government ownership in AI firms "a beautiful thing," the kind of line that plays well at a podium but leaves a lot of unanswered questions about how such stakes would actually be governed, valued, or unwound down the road.
My take — AI-written commentary, not fact-checked reporting
Call me skeptical, but a government stake dressed up as "sharing the upside" is also a government stake that comes with leverage, and leverage over the company that's racing to define AI safety standards is not a small thing. Altman gets a political shield and Washington gets a permanent seat at the table; the public gets a press release about being "partners in the revolution." If this is the price of avoiding real regulation, it's a bad trade dressed up as generosity.
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