OpenAI is weighing a 5 per cent stake in the US government worth $43bn (£32bn) as Sam Altman looks to mend relations with Donald Trump ahead of the ChatGPT maker’s stock market debut.
The proposal, first reported by the Financial Times, has been brought up in recent talks with the White House as the company prepares for a $1tn flight to New York, which would be among the largest in the company’s history.
Trump did not hide his enthusiasm for the American taxpayer participating in the leading developers of AI, describing the prospect as a “good thing” that could make society richer. “There’s something interesting about it, where it’s almost a relationship with the American public,” he said last month. “You make them partners in this transition. It can be a good thing. It can enrich them.”
The rationale behind this proposal is as much political as financial. Giving the public a direct interest in looking at AI is seen as a way to mitigate the growing backlash of technology’s impact on jobs, a concern that Altman himself has publicly grappled with, and the endless proliferation of power-hungry data centers. Altman has previously floated the idea of a public wealth fund that holds stakes in AI companies, and reports suggest he thinks rivals such as Anthropic, Google and Meta are rolling out similar deals with the government vehicle.
OpenAI is currently valued at $852bn, putting it at 5 per cent of an estimated $43bn stake. If this flotation reaches its goal of $ 1tn, the profit of the government paper will be immediate, a point that may not be lost on the president who boasted of the return from Washington’s ten percent stake in Intel, taken last year for $ 9bn and now worth more than $ 60bn.
Exactly where any shares of OpenAI will sit is up for debate. JD Vance, the vice president, said Trump favors a private wealth fund, and some executives have suggested parking the holdings in “Trump accounts,” investment accounts for children set up by the president. Bernie Sanders, a left-wing senator, has gone even further, saying that society should own a part of AI companies directly.
These negotiations mark a dramatic shift in Washington’s stance. Having initially taken the path of AI, the White House has increasingly intervened in recent months, blocking the release of the most powerful Anthropic programs and forcing OpenAI to limit access to its latest models, a move made against the background of intensifying competition from China.
Anthropic, on the other hand, has proposed special taxes on the AI sector to fund society’s “digital dividend”, a very different route to the same political destination.
OpenAI, whose employees shared a $6.6bn payment in a second share sale last year, was approached for comment.
