OpenAI CEO Sam Altman (left) and US President Donald Trump attend a working lunch on innovation and AI with G7 leaders, G7 outreach partners, and global technology CEOs during the G7 Summit in Evian-les-Bains, France on June 17, 2026.
Anna Moneymaker | Getty Images
OpenAI is proposing to transfer a 5% stake in the company to the U.S. government as the artificial intelligence startup seeks to ease growing political pressure in Washington, the Financial Times reported on Thursday.
The 5% holding is worth about $42.6 billion after AI Labs closed a record funding round in March at a post-money valuation of $852 billion.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has argued that giving the public a financial stake in the company is the best way to share the benefits of AI, the FT reported, citing two people familiar with the talks.
In early talks with the Trump administration, Altman proposed holding a stake of that size as part of a broader arrangement in which Washington would hold 5% stakes in major U.S. AI developers through government agencies, according to the report.
The proposed arrangement would involve Anthropic, Google, metawill transfer similar shares to the government through a sovereign wealth fund, the FT reported. It is unclear whether any of these groups agree with OpenAI’s proposal.
The White House, OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, and Meta did not immediately respond to CNBC’s requests for comment.
Pressure on leading U.S. AI companies has increased as Washington has grown wary of cybersecurity vulnerabilities associated with its models and growing competition from Chinese open-source models that have proven to be nearly as powerful and significantly cheaper than some of the top U.S. models.
Last month, Anthropic revoked access to its most advanced Mythos and Fable models to comply with export control directives from the government. The company behind the Claude AI platform announced on Tuesday that it had been allowed to restore access to its models after taking steps to resolve policymakers’ safety concerns.
CNBC reported last month that OpenAI’s pitch comes after more than a year of talks about possible government investment in the company, with Altman first pitching the concept directly to the Trump administration in early 2025.
In April, a major model maker proposed the creation of a “public wealth fund” to hold assets that capture the growth of AI companies and distribute the economic benefits to the public.
The Trump administration has previously acquired stock in private companies. Intel Corporation, IBMand other quantum and critical minerals companies during the president’s second term.
The government acquired a 10% stake in Intel after making a landmark $8.9 billion investment in the chipmaker’s common stock last August. President Donald Trump said in May that he should have asked for more investment in the company.
President Trump said it would be a “beautiful thing” for the US to take a stake in an AI giant and that it would make Americans “partners in this revolution.”
—CNBC’s Ashley Capoot contributed to this report.
