{"slug": "senior-u-s-officials-eye-government-shares-in-ai-giants", "title": "Senior U.S. Officials Eye Government Shares in AI Giants", "summary": "Senior U.S. officials have held preliminary discussions with major artificial intelligence companies, including OpenAI, about the federal government acquiring shares in their firms, according to three people familiar with the matter. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman pitched the concept directly to President Donald Trump in early 2025 and has continued discussions with senior administration officials as a way to distribute AI's economic benefits to the public, potentially through dividend payments to American households. The talks come as OpenAI and Anthropic prepare for massive initial public offerings and as public concern over AI grows, though the legal mechanism for such equity transfers remains unclear and the deal may ultimately not materialize.", "body_md": "Senior U.S. officials have held preliminary discussions with major artificial intelligence companies about the potential for the federal government to acquire some shares in their firms, according to three people familiar with the matter.\n\nSam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, has discussed the idea with senior Trump administration officials periodically** **since the president began his second term, said two of the sources, all of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity to reflect private deliberations. Altman first pitched the concept directly to President Donald Trump in a conversation in early 2025, and has discussed it again with senior administration officials in recent weeks as a way to more broadly distribute the economic benefits of AI to the public, they said.\n\nWhile planning is ongoing and details are in flux, discussions have centered on having the firms voluntarily cede the shares to the government, the people said. The returns on the investment could then be directed to public purposes, one of the people said, such as distributing a dividend payment to all American households.\n\nThe deliberations, which have not been previously reported, come as OpenAI and Anthropic prepare for what are expected to be among the largest initial public offerings in history — and as they struggle with public concern over AI. A person familiar with the matter said Anthropic is not having conversations with the administration about providing equity to the government.\n\n## Trending\n\nA dividend payment or other public benefit stemming from AI profits could help assuage widespread public anxiety and concern over its economic impacts, ensuring that the benefits of a technology built on collective human knowledge does not help only a small percentage of private owners.\n\nBut such an arrangement could also pose novel governance challenges, given the complications of the U.S. trying to effectively regulate something it partially owns, while also arguably increasing the incentives for a federal bailout.\n\nThe legal mechanism for any AI firm to turn over equity to the government is unclear and may pose an obstacle to putting the idea into effect, the people said. It is also not clear how far the talks have progressed, and several people cautioned that the deal may ultimately not come together.\n\nA spokesman for the White House declined to comment.\n\nSince the start of his second term, Trump has pursued partial government ownership of American companies to a far greater degree than any other administration in recent memory.\n\nThe U.S. has made direct investments in at least 10 companies, including a deal with Intel that the White House has touted for providing a “direct windfall for American taxpayers,” with the value of the company stock surging by four-fold, at least as of now, since the government’s purchase. After the Intel deal was reached, Trump [ said publicly](https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-wants-more-deals-like-intels-worrying-business-community-2025-08-25/), “I hope I’m going to have many more cases like it.”\n\nIn private, Trump has said that American taxpayers should benefit from artificial intelligence, said one of the people familiar with the matter.\n\nThis instinct is bipartisan: Sen. Bernie Sanders [ called this week](https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/01/opinion/artificial-intelligence-bernie-sanders.html) for the U.S. government to acquire 50 percent equity stakes in the AI companies, effectively bringing the companies under federal control. The Vermont independent’s forthcoming bill also would tax at 50% the stock of OpenAI, Athropic, xAI and other AI firms, with the proceeds being placed in a sovereign wealth fund for the public.\n\nTech companies are strongly opposed to this measure, but many are eager to find ways to win over Americans who are skeptical of AI. Fifty-five percent of Americans think AI will do more harm than good in their day-to-day lives, according to recent Quinnipiac [ polling](https://poll.qu.edu/poll-release?releaseid=3955). The upsurge of public anger has posed a threat to AI’s development, particularly through\n\n[to the construction of data centers crucial to its technological advancement.](https://www.notus.org/wisconsin/data-center-affordability-political-problem)\n\n__local resistance__OpenAI has explored multiple options for giving the public greater confidence in its offerings. In a [ paper released in April](https://cdn.openai.com/pdf/561e7512-253e-424b-9734-ef4098440601/Industrial%20Policy%20for%20the%20Intelligence%20Age.pdf), OpenAI issued a list of recommendations to ensure “a future where superintelligence benefits everyone,” including giving workers priority to use AI to eliminate dangerous tasks and helping entrepreneurs use AI to cut overhead.\n\nAnother recommendation by OpenAI was to create a “Public Wealth Fund” in which the government would broadly distribute the financial gains of AI companies. Asked for comment for this story, an OpenAI spokeswoman pointed to the April paper.\n\n“Create a Public Wealth Fund that provides every citizen — including those not invested in financial markets — with a stake in AI-driven economic growth,” OpenAI’s report states. “Policymakers and AI companies should work together to determine how to best seed the Fund, which could invest in diversified, long-term assets that capture growth in both AI companies and the broader set of firms adopting and deploying AI.”\n\nWhile OpenAI and the Trump administration may have incentives to reach an agreement, critics on both the left and right see potential downsides. Nat Purser, a senior policy advocate for AI policy at Public Knowledge, said the public should not “want a situation where the government becomes less willing to impose, or enforce, safety rules because doing so could reduce the value of its own investment.”\n\n“The problem is that the government would be a shareholder and a regulator at the same time, which creates substantial conflicts of interest,” Purser said.\n\nMany conservatives who oppose government interventions in the economy were critical of Trump’s deal with Intel, and would probably have even bigger gripes if OpenAI and the president came to an agreement.\n\n“We’re continuing to see the government pick preferred companies and engage in this kind of investment,” said Jennifer Huddleston, a senior fellow in technology policy at the Cato Institute, a right-leaning think-tank. “It raises questions about how that could intrude into a lot of the traditional principles when it comes to private enterprise and the free market.”\n\nOthers fear that any partial disbursement of equity to the government may not go far enough. Sanders, for instance, has argued public ownership of the firms is critical to ensure that “the transformation of human life” is not “dictated by a handful of Big Tech oligarchs.”\n\nSteve Bannon, a tech critic and the president’s former chief strategist, said the talks between OpenAI and administration officials were evidence that AI companies are fearful of public scrutiny and regulation. Like Sanders, Bannon argued that the government should take as much as 50% of the companies’ equity.\n\n“You can smell the stench of desperation emanating from the oligarchs as they run heedlessly to a public market takeout,” Bannon said. “We should not take ‘tip money’ but force them to cough up 50% of the equity — to be dispersed to American citizens.”\n\n## Sign in\n\nLog into your free account with your email. Don’t have one?\n\n##\nCheck your email for a one-time code.\n\nWe sent a 4-digit code to . 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Please reenter your email.", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/senior-u-s-officials-eye-government-shares-in-ai-giants", "canonical_source": "https://www.notus.org/technology/trump-ai-stake-openai", "published_at": "2026-06-04 23:42:45+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-06-04 23:47:20.680692+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["artificial-intelligence", "ai-policy", "ai-ethics", "ai-startups"], "entities": ["OpenAI", "Sam Altman", "Anthropic", "Donald Trump"], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/senior-u-s-officials-eye-government-shares-in-ai-giants", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/senior-u-s-officials-eye-government-shares-in-ai-giants.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/senior-u-s-officials-eye-government-shares-in-ai-giants.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/senior-u-s-officials-eye-government-shares-in-ai-giants.jsonld"}}