The Trump administration is reportedly considering one of the most unusual ideas to emerge from the AI boom – allowing the US government to take equity stakes in leading artificial intelligence companies, including OpenAI. The Trump administration officials have held discussions with major AI firms about possible arrangements under which the federal government could acquire shares in these companies, reports CNBC. President Donald Trump has publicly said the idea is worth exploring, arguing that if AI creates massive wealth in the coming decades, ordinary Americans should have a chance to benefit from it rather than leaving all the gains to founders, investors, and technology companies.
For now, no agreement has been announced, and no government stake in OpenAI has been finalized. The discussions remain at an early stage. The discussions are taking place at a time when AI has become one of the largest concentrations of private capital in the global economy. OpenAI is already among the most valuable private technology companies globally, while rivals like Anthropic and xAI have attracted billions of dollars from investors.
At the same time, the US government is supporting a massive buildout of AI infrastructure. Earlier this year, OpenAI, Oracle, and SoftBank announced the Stargate project, a plan that could involve up to $500 billion in AI-related infrastructure investments over several years. Billions of dollars are also being committed to data centers, advanced chips, cloud computing systems, and energy projects needed to power next-generation AI models.
A key figure behind the idea appears to be OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. The report indicates Altman has spent months discussing mechanisms that would allow the public to participate directly in AI-generated wealth. One proposal reportedly involves contributing OpenAI equity to help establish a public wealth fund that could be owned on behalf of American citizens. Rather than relying solely on future taxation of AI profits, supporters envision a structure where the government becomes a long-term shareholder and uses investment returns to benefit the public.
Trump, Senator Bernie Sanders, and Altman have all recently advocated some form of public participation in AI wealth, although their approaches differ. Sanders has gone furthest, proposing a system under which the government would acquire very large ownership stakes in major AI firms and place them into a sovereign wealth fund. Trump has instead stressed a partnership model in which the federal government would hold smaller positions while allowing companies to remain privately managed.
The timing becomes critical as the Trump administration has already announced investments or ownership interests in numerous companies tied to semiconductors, critical minerals, quantum computing, and other technologies considered vital for economic competitiveness and national security. Simultaneously, Washington has been expanding its oversight of advanced AI systems through executive orders, cybersecurity reviews, national-security directives, and voluntary pre-release testing frameworks for frontier AI models.
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Ashutosh is a Senior Writer at The Tech Portal, largely reporting on new tech, and intersection of technology and business. Ashutosh’s career spans across nearly a decade of technology writing across multiple platforms and languages.
