OpenAI has discussed giving the US government a 5 percent ownership stake, according to the Financial Times, a proposal that would put taxpayers directly on the cap table of one of the most valuable AI companies on the planet.
The idea is still preliminary, the Financial Times reported, citing two unnamed people familiar with the discussions. The paper said OpenAI CEO Sam Altman argued that letting the public own part of the company would be the strongest way to share in AI’s financial upside. The Verge reported that Altman first raised the concept with President Donald Trump early last year.
The number under discussion is not decorative. Altman reportedly suggested 5 percent. OpenAI’s latest funding round valued the company at $852 billion, according to The Verge, which would make that slice worth about $42.6 billion. That is a very expensive peace offering, if it ever becomes real.
The mechanism would be blunt: the government would receive equity, meaning the public would benefit financially if OpenAI’s value rises. The proposal would also reportedly extend beyond OpenAI, with other US AI companies asked to give the government comparable stakes. The Financial Times said it is not clear whether those companies would accept such an arrangement.
A policy hedge dressed as public benefit
The timing is the useful part. The Financial Times framed the proposal as a way for OpenAI to reduce friction with the Trump administration and soften public hostility toward AI. That hostility has grown as AI companies race to commercialize systems that require enormous infrastructure spending, absorb copyrighted and public data, and threaten to rearrange labor markets. The report does not say the White House has accepted the idea.
The Trump administration has already shown a willingness to intervene directly in AI markets. The Verge reported that the Pentagon earlier this year labeled Anthropic, one of OpenAI’s main rivals, a supply chain risk. Last month, the administration placed export controls on Anthropic’s newest models, forcing the company to pull them from the market, according to The Verge.
Those moves have made future government action a live business risk for AI developers. A federal ownership stake would not rewrite export-control law or procurement policy by itself. It would, however, give Washington a financial interest in the sector’s winners, which is presumably the point.
Public officials have also shown growing interest in using policy to capture and redistribute some of the money generated by AI, according to The Verge. A government equity stake would be one of the more direct versions of that idea: no tax formula, no future fund structure, just ownership.
For now, the proposal remains a reported discussion, not a deal. The unanswered questions are the ones that matter: what the government would give up in return, whether ownership would come with influence over company decisions, and whether rival AI firms would tolerate a system where regulatory peace starts looking like a share issuance.
This story draws on original reporting from The Verge.
