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OpenAI wants to make Uncle Sam its newest business partner.
The ChatGPT maker has held early, "conceptual" talks with President Donald Trump’s administration about giving Washington a 5% ownership stake, the Financial Times reported Thursday, citing two people familiar with the discussions. Based on OpenAI's $852 billion valuation from its March funding round, that stake would be worth roughly $42.6 billion.
CEO Sam Altman has pitched the idea to President Trump, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, according to the FT. He's also spoken with Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders in recent weeks.
The proposal doesn't stop with OpenAI. Altman and his team have suggested that other major US AI developers, Anthropic, Google, and Meta among them, contribute similar 5% stakes into a government-run investment vehicle modeled on the Alaska Permanent Fund, the state-owned fund that turns Alaska's oil revenue into yearly dividend checks for residents.
None of those companies has confirmed they'd go along with it, and any formal deal would likely need an act of Congress.
Why OpenAI may want Washington involved
AI companies are under real pressure in Washington right now. OpenAI delayed the wide release of its GPT-5.6 model last month after a government request.
Anthropic went through something similar, suspending access to its most advanced models over export-control concerns before the government lifted those restrictions this week. Both companies are also gearing up for IPOs that could value them north of $1 trillion, making regulatory goodwill in Washington more valuable than ever.
Trump has talked openly about wanting Americans to share in AI's financial upside, telling reporters last month that a government stake "almost becomes a partnership with the American public." He's called the concept "interesting" and said his administration would look into it.
How an AI wealth fund could work
This builds on the ground OpenAI already laid.
In April, the company published a policy paper calling for a "public wealth fund" that would give citizens, even those with no money in the stock market, a stake in AI's growth. Anthropic has floated something similar: a "digital dividend" funded through sector taxes. Sanders, for his part, wants to go much further: a 50% government stake across major AI firms, funded by a one-time tax, with board seats and voting power attached.
There's also precedent. Washington already holds a 10% stake in Intel and takes a cut of Nvidia and AMD's chip sales to China.
The regulatory conflict
The most critical issue here is a structural conflict of interest. If the government becomes a shareholder, does it apply the same regulatory rigor as a shareholder without a financial interest in the company's success? There is a genuine risk that oversight could soften.
While the administration has framed this as a partnership, with President Trump calling the idea “a beautiful thing” that makes Americans “partners in this revolution,” it fundamentally shifts the government's role from referee to teammate, which could complicate future antitrust or safety enforcement.
That is the tension at the center of the proposal. A government stake could turn AI growth into a public asset, but it could also make future oversight harder to separate from financial interest. The question is not just whether Washington wants a piece of OpenAI. It is whether Washington can own that piece and still regulate the company at arm’s length.
For more on how OpenAI is expanding its enterprise footprint beyond government initiatives, read our coverage of HP's expanded OpenAI partnership and what it means for enterprise AI adoption.