OpenAI Floats Giving Washington a 5% Stake in Itself
2 min readOpenAI has floated an idea that would have sounded unthinkable a year ago: handing the United States government a roughly 5 percent ownership stake in the company. According to reporting from the Financial Times, the stake would be worth about $42.6 billion, based on OpenAI’s $852 billion valuation from its record funding round in March.
What OpenAI Is Proposing
The talks are still early and described as conceptual. OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman has reportedly discussed the idea directly with President Donald Trump, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. Rather than a cash payment, the plan would give the public an equity position that rises and falls with the company’s value.
The model Altman points to is the Alaska Permanent Fund, a sovereign wealth fund created in 1976 to invest the state’s surplus oil revenues and pay residents an annual dividend. The pitch reframes AI as a national resource whose gains should flow back to citizens, much as oil royalties do in Alaska.
A Bigger Ask Than One Company
The proposal reportedly goes beyond OpenAI. Altman has suggested that every leading US AI company set aside 5 percent of its equity for a public vehicle, though it is far from clear that rivals such as Anthropic or Google would agree. Altman has also spoken with Senator Bernie Sanders, who has pushed a more aggressive version that would see the government take a 50 percent stake in major AI firms through a sovereign fund.
Why It Matters
The move reads as an attempt to defuse political pressure. Lawmakers on both sides have questioned whether a handful of private companies should capture the enormous financial upside of AI while the public shoulders the disruption. Offering Washington a stake gives OpenAI a way to answer that criticism without ceding day to day control.
Execution is the hard part. Analysts note that an arrangement this large could require an act of Congress, and government ownership of a frontier AI lab raises thorny questions about regulation, conflicts of interest, and national security. For now the idea is a trial balloon, but it signals how closely the future of AI and the machinery of the state are becoming intertwined.