OpenAI Offers 5% Stake to U.S. Government

The Financial Times reported that OpenAI proposed handing the U.S. government a 5% ownership stake, according to CNBC's coverage of the FT report. CNBC put the value of that stake at roughly $42.6 billion based on OpenAI's $852 billion post-money valuation from its March 2026 funding round. Two people familiar with the talks told the FT that Altman argued giving the public a financial interest in OpenAI is the best way to share AI's upside. It is unclear whether the administration intends to pursue the stake; the White House and OpenAI did not immediately respond to CNBC's requests for comment.

1. June 5, 2026

   CNBC and NOTUS report that Altman and Trump administration officials have been discussing a potential government equity stake for over a year, with President Trump telling reporters aboard Air Force One that a stake "almost becomes a partnership with the American public."

2. July 2, 2026

   The Financial Times reports, per CNBC, that OpenAI has proposed a specific 5% stake worth an estimated $42.6 billion, described by CNBC as an attempt to address political blowback.

The proposal builds on OpenAI's April 2026 white paper concept for a government-seeded "Public Wealth Fund" that would let the U.S. donate OpenAI equity into a sovereign investment vehicle, similar in spirit to Trump's February 2026 executive order calling for a federal sovereign wealth fund. It also follows real precedent: the U.S. government took a 10% stake in Intel and negotiated revenue-sharing arrangements with Nvidia and AMD on AI chip sales to China (15% of revenue, later 25% on Nvidia's H200). Senator Bernie Sanders, who has proposed a 50% one-off tax on major AI firms' equity, has separately discussed a sovereign wealth fund concept with Altman. Public Knowledge's Nat Purser has warned the arrangement could make government "less willing to impose, or enforce, safety rules because doing so could reduce the value of its own investment."

If this or similar deals close, expect it to shape how AI companies talk about safety and regulation: a government with equity in a lab has a financial incentive alongside its oversight role, which could affect how aggressively agencies pursue safety rules, export controls, or antitrust scrutiny of that lab specifically. Teams building on OpenAI's platform, or competing with it, should watch whether rival labs face similar asks, since a sector-wide pattern of government equity would be a materially different regulatory environment than today's.

Watch for an official response from the White House or OpenAI accepting, rejecting, or modifying the 5% figure; whether other frontier labs (Anthropic, Google DeepMind, xAI) are approached with similar proposals; and whether Congress or Sanders push a competing tax-based approach instead of an equity stake. OpenAI's expected IPO, reportedly targeting a $1 trillion valuation, is also a relevant marker since it would change what a 5% government stake is actually worth.

Government equity in frontier AI labs is a structurally different regulatory posture than subsidies or export controls, and it is arriving piecemeal (Intel, Nvidia/AMD chip revenue shares, now a proposed OpenAI stake) rather than through a single deliberate policy. That pattern is worth tracking independent of whether this specific 5% figure survives negotiation, because it signals a broader shift toward the U.S. government treating stakes in strategic AI and chip companies as a standing policy tool.