OpenAI Offers US Government a $42 Billion Equity Stake

OpenAI has proposed that the United States government take a 5 percent stake in the company. According to a Financial Times report cited by CNBC, CNN and Euronews, that stake would be worth roughly $42.6 billion based on the company's March valuation of $852 billion.

The idea did not come out of nowhere. Sam Altman has been discussing it with the Trump administration for more than a year, and has recently spoken directly with the president, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. He has also talked to Senator Bernie Sanders, a well-known critic of wealth concentration in the AI industry.

A fund modeled on Alaska

Altman and other OpenAI executives are proposing that leading American AI companies each hand over a 5 percent stake to a vehicle modeled on the Alaska Permanent Fund, which invests the state's oil revenue in capital markets and pays out annual dividends to Alaska residents.

Altman's argument is straightforward: if artificial intelligence is going to drive economic growth, citizens should get a direct financial stake in that growth. Such a mechanism would also be meant to cool the mounting political criticism of the biggest AI labs, which stand accused of amassing power and capital without any public oversight.

Who else would contribute to the fund

The proposal is not limited to OpenAI. Altman wants Anthropic, Google and Meta to hand over similar 5 percent stakes, effectively partially socializing ownership of the country's leading AI companies. Anthropic is not yet in talks with the administration about giving up equity, but in a paper published a month ago the company backed a similar direction, writing that every American should have a direct financial stake in the economy at the moment AI is driving its growth.

Implementing such an arrangement is not straightforward legally. Experts cited by the Financial Times note that a transfer of equity to the government at this scale would most likely require a dedicated act of Congress, not simply a decision by the administration.

Criticism from the left

Altman's proposal has not won over the industry's most radical critics. Senator Sanders dismissed it as a watered-down alternative to genuine socialization of AI profits. Instead, Sanders is pushing a one-time 50 percent tax on shares of OpenAI, Anthropic and xAI, arguing that a voluntary 5 percent is too little given the scale of profits these companies are generating from developing language models.

The timing is not coincidental. The proposal surfaced just days after Washington blocked wider release of the GPT-5.6 model on safety grounds, underscoring how tightly the business interests of the top AI labs are now intertwined with US government policy.

What it means for the market

For Polish companies and investors watching the AI sector, the matter carries weight beyond US politics alone. If an Alaska-style fund does get off the ground, it could set a regulatory precedent that institutions in Europe will eventually have to reckon with, as debate over taxing AI giants and sharing the gains from automation is only just heating up there.

For now, nothing is settled. Neither Congress nor the other companies on Altman's list have confirmed they are ready to accept such an arrangement, and the proposal itself could still change many times before it reaches the legislative floor.

Sources: OpenAI proposes U.S. government own 5% stake to address political blowback (cnbc.com), OpenAI offers the US government a 5% ownership stake (euronews.com), OpenAI in talks to give Trump administration a 5% stake in the company (cnn.com)