OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman has proposed donating 5% of the company's equity to a US sovereign wealth fund, according to a Financial Times report published Thursday citing two people familiar with the discussions. Under Altman's pitch, other AI companies would contribute similar stakes, creating a public vehicle that holds shares in the frontier labs. The reported motivation is blunt: the donation would help OpenAI "secure good relations with the administration and … address political blowback."
The FT's sourcing describes the talks as preliminary, and any formal structure would almost certainly require congressional approval — a threshold that would extend the timeline by years and open the mechanics to negotiation on Capitol Hill. No dollar valuation has been attached to the 5% figure in the current proposal, though OpenAI's most recent private-market marks put the notional value of such a stake in the tens of billions.
The idea has been circling Washington for months. CNBC first reported similar discussions in June, and President Trump subsequently confirmed he had discussed the concept publicly.
“concepts where pieces could be given to the American public, where the American public essentially becomes a partner with the companies”— Donald Trump, US President
Key facts
- 01Sam Altman proposed donating 5% of OpenAI's equity to a US sovereign wealth fund, per the Financial Times.
- 02The plan would extend to other AI companies contributing similar stakes, though specifics remain unresolved.
- 03Sen. Bernie Sanders introduced the American AI Sovereign Wealth Fund Act in June, calling for a 50% tax on AI company stock.
- 04OpenAI's April policy paper, 'Industrial Policy for the Intelligence Age,' proposed the fund invest directly in AI labs.
- 05Formal action would likely require congressional approval, complicating any near-term rollout.
Altman himself has publicly floated variations of a public AI fund, and OpenAI's proposals have grown more concrete over the past year. This is the second time in recent months AI Chat Daily has covered a version of this plan, following June reporting that pegged a potential US government stake at $42.6 billion based on then-current valuation math.
The most detailed framework to date came in an OpenAI policy paper released in April, titled "Industrial Policy for the Intelligence Age." The paper proposed a public wealth fund that could invest directly in AI labs and in companies deploying AI technology, with returns flowing to citizens rather than to a general treasury account.
The paper laid out the distribution mechanic in explicit terms.
“Returns from the Fund could be distributed directly to citizens, allowing more people to participate directly in the upside of AI-driven growth, regardless of their starting wealth or access to capital”— OpenAI, policy paper, Industrial Policy for the Intelligence Age
A more aggressive alternative is already on the table in Congress. In June, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) introduced the American AI Sovereign Wealth Fund Act, which would impose a one-time 50% tax on AI company stock, with the collected shares deposited into a public wealth fund. The bill applies to all AI companies deemed "systemically important," a category that sweeps in data centers, AI infrastructure firms, and robotics companies alongside the model labs.
The Sanders bill includes a carve-out that acknowledges the messiness of drawing a perimeter around "AI companies." Firms like Google and SpaceX, where AI is only part of the business, would be allowed to spin off non-AI operations to avoid the tax. The bill has not advanced to committee, and its 50% seizure rate makes the OpenAI-backed 5% donation model look conciliatory by comparison — which is likely part of the point.
The obvious tension: a voluntary 5% donation from one company means nothing unless the other frontier labs follow. Anthropic, Google DeepMind, xAI, and Meta have not signaled any interest in matching the pledge, and the reported language about "political blowback" suggests OpenAI is trying to shape the terms of a debate it expects to lose in some form regardless. Congressional approval, valuation methodology, voting rights on the donated shares, and the mechanics of distribution to citizens all remain unresolved.
The strategic logic for OpenAI is straightforward. The company is negotiating simultaneously with regulators over antitrust scrutiny of its Microsoft relationship, with courts over copyright suits from publishers and authors, and with a public that recent polling shows is hardening against local AI infrastructure buildouts. Offering the federal government an equity stake reframes OpenAI from an extractive private actor into a public-private partner — the exact framing Trump used in his June comments. Whether that framing survives contact with congressional drafting, and whether competitors follow, will determine whether this is a genuine policy shift or a well-timed trial balloon.
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