The Trump administration may take an equity stake in OpenAI

President Donald Trump said Friday that he has spoken to AI companies about making deals “where the American people can benefit from the success of AI.”

Trump does not appear to have mentioned specific companies in his comments, but OpenAI is a likely candidate, especially after CNBC reported that the Trump administration was already discussing an equity stake with the AI ​​company.

Some of these shares could be used to establish OpenAI’s recently proposed “public wealth fund,” CNBC said. As the company explains, the proceeds from the fund “can be distributed directly to citizens, allowing more people to participate directly in the upside of AI-driven growth, regardless of their initial wealth or access to capital.”

According to Bloomberg, when reporters aboard Air Force One asked Trump about the idea, he responded that he was talking to AI executives about “concepts where the pieces could be presented to the American public, where the American public becomes an essential partner with companies.”

Bloomberg also reports that CEO Sam Altman has been discussing the idea of ​​a government stake in major AI companies as early as 2025.

This appears to be in line with Trump’s broader interest in government ownership of for-profit companies — most notably, with the government taking a 10% stake in struggling chipmaker Intel last year.

The idea has also received some attention on the left, with Sen. Bernie Sanders this week proposing a one-time 50% tax that companies like OpenAI, Anthropic, and xAI (part of SpaceX) would pay in stock.

With all of these companies likely to go public this year, Sanders said this tax would “give the public a direct role in determining the future of this technology” and “ensure that the trillions of dollars that AI potentially generates are used to improve the lives of every one of us.”

David Sachs, an investor who recently resigned from his role as AI and cryptocurrency chief under Trump, posted that he can see why Sanders’ idea would resonate, “including with many on the right,” but warned that it would actually “accelerate the merger of business and government toward which we are already headed.”

Elsewhere on social media, former Microsoft employee Dare Obasanjo noted that “the groundwork is already being laid for a government bailout for OpenAI.”