OpenAI is offering the US government a 5% equity stake in a bid to transform AI wealth into a public asset—and to buy some political breathing room.
According to the Financial Times, CEO Sam Altman raised the idea with senior Trump administration officials including Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. The proposal is still conceptual and would need Congressional approval, but it signals a drastic shift in how AI companies might handle public scrutiny.
The Alaska Model for AI Dividends
Altman’s team explicitly cited Alaska’s Permanent Fund as inspiration—a state-owned investment vehicle that distributes returns from oil revenue directly to residents. The OpenAI version would pool equity from multiple AI companies into a similar public trust, then pay out dividends to American citizens.
That ambition runs into a hard reality: it’s unclear whether Anthropic, Google (GOOG), or Meta (META) would hand over percentages of their own equity. Without broad industry participation, the fund would lack both scale and legitimacy. OpenAI declined to comment to the FT; CoinDesk’s own request for comment went unanswered.
Political Calculus and IPO Timing
This isn’t purely altruistic. OpenAI faces escalating political heat—state-level AI regulations, federal antitrust rumblings, and a general public distrust of concentrated AI power. A direct financial stake for the US government turns critics into shareholders.
Meanwhile, OpenAI’s IPO clock is ticking. The company confidentially filed draft paperwork with the SEC in June but has not committed to a timeline. Recent reports suggest advisers are weighing a delay until 2027. A government equity arrangement could complicate valuation and underwriting—or, if structured cleanly, provide a stamp of approval that calms institutional investors.
Whether other AI labs bite will determine if this becomes a template or a footnote.
Source: ChatGPT developer OpenAI said to discuss offering U.S. government a 5% stake: FT
Domain: coindesk.com
Comments load interactively on the live page.