OpenAI offers US government a $42 billion slice of itself: report

OpenAI is in talks with the Donald Trump administration about handing the US government a 5% stake in the company, the Financial Times reports. I mentionedCiting two people familiar with the discussions. In OpenAI Valuation of $852 billion From the March financing round, this tranche is valued at approximately $42.6 billion.

Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, sees this as democratizing the economic upside of AI — the best way to ensure Americans participate in the industry’s growth. He raised the idea directly with President Trump, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, and Treasury Secretary Scott Besent, according to the Financial Times.

The proposed structure would serve as a model for a sovereign wealth instrument such as the Alaska Permanent Fund, a state-owned fund created in 1976 to invest surplus oil revenues and pay annual dividends to state residents.

The proposal doesn’t stop with OpenAI. Altman reportedly wants other major US AI developers — Anthropic, Google, and Meta — to give away a similar 5% cut to the government through the same tool. None of these companies have shown any interest in joining so far.

OpenAI GPT-5.6 released On a limited basis just days ago, after the White House Office of the National Cyber ​​Director requested a restricted rollout while officials develop a testing framework for frontier AI. This was the second government intervention of the month, during which Anthropy had spent most of June In lockdown on Mythos 5 and Fable 5 While it was subject to emergency export controls, after the Ministry of Defense previously described the company as a “supply chain risk”, before access was restored this week.

OpenAI has been more supportive than Anthropic when it comes to its deals with the US government, signing partnerships that Anthropic rejected.

Equality has become management’s preferred tool for managing technical relationships. The government took a 9.9% stake in Intel last August, paying $8.9 billion by converting CHIPS grants into shares at $20.47 per share.position It is now worth more than $50 billion. AMD and Nvidia have agreed to hand over 15% of their chip revenue in China in exchange for export licenses. Trump He said In May, he should have negotiated a larger stake in Intel.

The Financial Times described the discussions as conceptual and at an early stage, adding that any arrangement may require congressional approval.

The deal, if implemented, would be the first time Washington has owned shares in a private AI company. For OpenAI — which is navigating a secretive IPO filing and an investigation by a coalition of 42 state attorneys general — the deal may be worth it.

Sen. Bernie Sanders, who has met with Altman in recent weeks, is the same Pay a bill This would require the largest AI companies to hand over 50% of their shares to a public fund, with the proceeds flowing to Americans as direct payments. Both OpenAI and Anthropic have filed confidentially for their IPOs, meaning that any potential government stake agreed upon now would precede the ownership dilution that comes with a public offering.