OpenAI has held preliminary discussions with the Trump administration about giving the US government a 5% equity stake in the company, equivalent to roughly $42.6 billion at the company’s most recent $852 billion valuation following its $40 billion March financing round, the Financial Times reported Thursday. CEO Sam Altman has discussed the proposal with President Trump, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, and separately with Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders. The proposal is structured on the model of the Alaska Permanent Fund – a sovereign wealth fund that invests state oil revenue and pays annual dividends to Alaska residents – with US AI companies contributing equity to a vehicle that would distribute economic returns to the American public. OpenAI has also proposed that other major US AI companies, including Anthropic, Google, and Meta, contribute similar 5% stakes, though it is unclear whether any of those companies would agree. Reuters could not independently verify the report, and OpenAI and the White House both declined to comment. YourNewsClub tracks the Alaska Permanent Fund framing as the most strategically revealing element of the proposal: it repositions AI equity not as a regulatory concession but as a resource-wealth distribution mechanism, framing American citizens as having a prior claim on AI returns in the same way Alaskans have a claim on oil revenue.
Trump told reporters last month that he was hearing “concepts where pieces could be given to the American public,” calling the idea “interesting.” Sanders has publicly called for a 50% government stake in large AI companies. The Trump administration has previously taken roughly 10% of Intel and 15% of MP Materials, converting federal grants into equity as part of a push to secure US supply chains. OpenAI’s 5% offer, if accepted, would be the first time the government holds equity in a frontier AI company rather than a hardware or materials manufacturer.
The Trump administration has increasingly asserted informal approval authority over frontier AI releases: export controls on Anthropic’s Fable 5 and Mythos 5 were imposed then lifted after 18 days, and OpenAI delayed its GPT-5.6 rollout at government request. An equity stake would formalise that relationship differently – giving the government a financial interest in the industry’s success rather than primarily a liability-limiting interest in restricting access.
The proposal’s fate depends partly on whether Anthropic, Google, and Meta would agree to similar stakes. Anthropic has floated a “digital dividend” concept – payments to Americans funded by taxes on the AI sector rather than equity dilution. Google and Meta have not publicly commented. YourNewsClub clocks the next time Trump or a senior administration official publicly addresses the equity stake proposal as the data point that will clarify whether the White House is treating the FT report as a trial balloon or a serious negotiating position.
The Trump administration’s existing pattern of equity stakes in strategic industries – Intel at roughly 10%, MP Materials at 15% – provides a reference range for what a government AI stake might look like in practice. Each of those deals was structured as a conversion of federal grants rather than a voluntary offer from a private company, which means OpenAI’s structure, if it materialises, would represent a genuinely new model rather than an extension of existing precedent.
The parallel Sanders conversation Altman is reportedly conducting is the most politically interesting element of the story. A progressive senator who has publicly called for a 50% government stake was offered a conversation about a 5% proposal by the CEO of the world’s most valuable private AI company. YourNewsClub counts the distance between 5% and 50% as the negotiating range that the next several months will need to close, or fail to close, before OpenAI’s confidential IPO filing becomes public.
Anthropics own ‘digital dividend’ concept – payments to Americans funded by AI sector taxes rather than equity dilution – describes a structurally different distribution mechanism than OpenAI’s Alaska Fund model. If both companies are now separately negotiating with both parties in Washington on what shape public benefit should take, the outcome is unlikely to be any single model applied uniformly across the industry.
Your News Club seats OpenAI’s next formal regulatory filing or IPO-related disclosure as the document that will most clearly reveal whether the Alaska Fund proposal has been formally presented to regulators or remains a preliminary talking point reported by two anonymous sources.