President Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One on Friday that the federal government taking equity stakes in leading AI companies is on the table, confirming the contours of a proposal OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman has been pitching to the White House for more than a year.

“There are concepts where pieces could be given to the American public, where the American public essentially becomes a partner with the companies,” Trump said, adding, “There’s something very interesting about it.” A meeting with AI executives is expected, in his words, “in the very short, very near future.”

The framework under discussion traces back to an OpenAI policy paper published in April calling for a “Public Wealth Fund” seeded with donated equity that would give “every citizen — including those not invested in financial markets — a stake in AI-driven economic growth.” NOTUS first reported the conversations, citing three people familiar with the matter who said Altman first raised the concept with Trump in early 2025 and revisited it with senior officials in recent weeks. No investment terms have been finalized. Anthropic, per a person familiar with the matter, isn’t in talks with the administration about providing equity.

The administration already took a 10 percent stake in Intel last year, so the structural precedent isn’t new. What’s new is the scale. OpenAI is valued at more than $850 billion and preparing an IPO as soon as this year, which makes any donated-equity arrangement a multi-hundred-billion-dollar question of how the upside gets sliced before public markets price it.

There’s also a left flank. Senator Bernie Sanders has proposed a one-time 50 percent tax on OpenAI, Anthropic, and xAI, payable in stock, to fund a sovereign wealth vehicle of his own. Two very different politics, converging on the same instinct: that frontier AI equity is too consequential to leave entirely with its current holders.

Sources