OpenAI proposes handing the US government a 5% equity stake

2:30 PM · July 14, 2026

OpenAI has floated giving the US government a 5% equity stake in the company, worth about $42.6 billion at its recent $852 billion valuation, in discussions with President Trump, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, according to reporting from the Financial Times that has since been corroborated across major outlets. Sam Altman's proposal goes beyond OpenAI alone: he has suggested every leading US AI company allot a similar 5% slice of equity to a shared public vehicle modeled on the Alaska Permanent Fund, the sovereign fund that invests the state's oil wealth and pays dividends to residents. Altman has reportedly argued the arrangement is the best way to share AI's economic upside with the public rather than letting it accrue only to shareholders. The proposal envisions Anthropic, Google, and Meta ceding similar stakes, though it remains unclear whether any of them would agree, and any deal of this scale would likely require an act of Congress rather than an executive action. The pitch lands amid a broader realignment between the White House and frontier AI labs, following the administration's separate intervention to stagger OpenAI's GPT-5.6 rollout for government review.