Openai Sam Altman Proposes Giving Trump Administration 5 Percent Equity Stake Report

OpenAI founder Sam Altman has reportedly proposed granting the US government a 5% equity stake in the company as part of a broader arrangement under which Washington would hold a similar stake in each of the country's leading AI developers.

Altman and other OpenAI executives suggested that the US government hold a 5% stake in each of the country's leading AI developers through a government-backed investment vehicle. The proposal could also extend to Anthropic, Google and Meta Platforms, although it remains unclear whether those companies would support the idea, according to the Financial Times.

The report mentioned that Altman believes giving the government an equity stake in OpenAI would be the most effective way to ensure the public shares in the economic gains from the AI boom.

Altman has discussed the stake sale with US President Donald Trump, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent.. He has also spoken to Democratic Senator Bernie Sanders in recent weeks, Reuters reported.

OpenAI had earlier sought to create a "public wealth fund" to invest in AI companies and distribute proceeds to citizens, while Anthropic said it was exploring a "digital dividend," defined as payments to Americans funded by taxes on the AI sector.

The proposal comes as the Trump administration has stepped up scrutiny of AI companies. The US President said he is exploring plans to give the public a stake in leading AI companies in response to concerns that individual Americans will not share in the sector's expected profits, according to Reuters.

Last month, on June 12, the Trump administration ordered Anthropic to restrict foreign access to its AI models over national security concerns. Since the company could not reliably separate foreign nationals from other users in real time, it shut access to the models for everyone, including Americans.

However, the government later lifted those restrictions on Anthropic's Fable 5 and Mythos 5 models after the company addressed the administration's safety concerns, allowing the models to be distributed more broadly.

Anthropic said the US government's export control order came after Amazon researchers found a way to bypass Fable 5's safeguards, allowing the powerful AI model to identify software vulnerabilities or access other illegal information, according to Reuters.

In an earlier clash with the White House, Anthropic angered President Donald Trump's team by refusing to allow its technology to be used for mass surveillance and autonomous weapons, leading the Pentagon to cancel its contracts with the company, AFP reported.

OpenAI said last week that it had delayed the full public launch of GPT-5.6 at the US government's request, limiting access to a small group of vetted partners.