OpenAI is in talks to hand the US government a 5% ownership stake ahead of its planned public listing, the Financial Times reported this week.
The company has also floated the idea that other major American AI firms follow suit, though it remains unclear whether rivals such as Anthropic or Google would agree. The proposal is still in early stages of discussion, and the US government has not yet made any official statement confirming or denying the report.
WHY ARE THE DISCUSSIONS HAPPENING NOW?
OpenAI’s pitch is being viewed as an attempt to get closer to the Trump administration, which has stepped up scrutiny of American artificial intelligence companies at a time when there’s mounting anxiety that AI will displace jobs while concentrating wealth in a handful of firms.
Last month, President Donald Trump said he was exploring ways for ordinary Americans to benefit from AI companies, prompted by concern that the public was not sharing in the industry’s profits.
OpenAI’s proposal dovetails with the administration’s thinking, framing itself as one way AI firms could give back to citizens.
Managing the relationship with the US government has also become a matter of practical necessity. OpenAI last month delayed the wider launch of its latest model after a request from the Trump administration.
Around the same time, the administration had separately ordered Anthropic to withdraw access of its most advanced AI models to foreigners over national security concerns. The suspension was lifted after Anthropic assured the government that immediate fixes had been made. Anthropic too – following months of a fraught relationship with the Trump administration – said it was working with the government.
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The stakes are heightened by timing. OpenAI is preparing for an initial public offering that could value the company at up to $1 trillion.
While markets have enthusiastically backed the AI frenzy, building artificial intelligence at scale is enormously capital-intensive. Chips, data centres and infrastructure all require billions of dollars — and government funding or support could help offset those costs, Reuters reported.
THE PROPOSALS
Under the plan reported by FT, OpenAI’s 5% stake was not likely to be with government officials directly, but could be parked in a dedicated public investment fund. Reuters reported that this fund could possibly be modelled on Alaska’s Permanent Fund, which invests state revenue in oil and pays residents an annual dividend.
The idea isn’t new. Earlier this year, OpenAI proposed creating a ‘Public Wealth Fund’ that would invest in AI companies and distribute the resulting profits to American citizens, according to a company statement released in April. The company said, “Returns from the fund could be distributed directly to citizens, allowing more people to participate directly in the upside of AI-driven growth.”
Anthropic, the other US giant behind Claude AI models, floated a parallel concept: a “digital dividend” under which Americans would receive payments funded by taxes levied on AI companies.
Joseph Blasi, who teaches corporate governance at Rutgers University, explained that AI is built using public data, public research and public infrastructure, and that the public should therefore share in its financial returns, Reuters reported.
“The public infrastructure in the United States is a citizen domain. It’s not something that a billionaire here or there or a trillionaire here or there can just grab,” Blasi said.
Other supporters of the scheme have suggested giving financial stake in AI companies to citizens.
The issue was thrust into the spotlight in mid-June, when Democratic senator Bernie Sanders called for the government to hold a 50% stake in large AI companies, arguing that AI was built on human knowledge and that ordinary Americans should benefit from it financially. Sanders also demanded government representation on company boards.
Other technical routes have been floated too. Some legal experts propose that the government collect taxes in the form of company shares rather than cash, a mechanism that would hand Washington ownership rights without spending taxpayer money to buy in.
Another approach, suggested by policymakers, would see the US government invest directly in AI firms in exchange for equity, similar to its roughly 10% stake in Intel secured in return for funding.
The US government, in 2025, took 9.9% stakes in Intel and MP Materials to strengthen critical semiconductor and rare earth supply chains, and reduce its dependence on China.
THE RISKS
Some analysts have pointed out potential downsides in such an arrangement.
Indranil Bandyopadhyay, principal analyst at Forrester Research, told Reuters that a government stake could reassure investors nervous about future regulation by the US government, but other countries could then demand similar ownership stakes of their own before granting AI companies market access.
This could snarl AI companies’ global expansion.
Another concern was that government involvement could erode a company’s independence, with the State potentially more focused on protecting its investment than acting as a neutral regulator. There are also worries that politics, then, could shape AI’s development and corporate decision-making at the companies.
WHY IS AI NOW FRAMED AS A NATIONAL SECURITY ISSUE?
According to Axios, the Trump administration increasingly views AI through the lens of economic and national security, restricting foreign access to advanced models even as it works to preserve America’s lead in the race with China.
The administration treats frontier AI, chips and other related infrastructure as strategic national assets, sources of both economic and military power. In July 2025, the White House had launched what it called, ‘Winning the Race: America’s A.I. Action Plan’. The document’s opening page quotes Trump, “As our global competitors race to exploit these technologies, it is a national security imperative for the United States to achieve and maintain unquestioned and unchallenged global technological dominance.”
