OpenAI has proposed giving the U.S. government a 5% equity stake in the company, according to a Financial Times report on July 2, 2026. At OpenAI's $852 billion valuation from its March funding round, that stake would be worth roughly $42.6 billion.
CEO Sam Altman discussed the idea directly with President Trump, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. Altman envisions a broader arrangement in which every leading U.S. AI developer -- potentially including Anthropic, Google, Meta, and xAI -- would contribute a similar stake to a sovereign wealth fund modeled on the Alaska Permanent Fund, paying dividends to American residents from the industry's gains.
The proposal lands between full private ownership and Senator Bernie Sanders' more aggressive American AI Sovereign Wealth Fund Act, which calls for 50% public ownership of AI firms. Any deal would likely require an act of Congress, and the discussions remain conceptual and early-stage. The Trump administration has already taken equity positions elsewhere, including a 10% stake in Intel now worth more than $60 billion.