OpenAI floats giving Trump administration 5 percent cut of AI boom
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- OpenAI has floated giving the US government a 5% ownership stake to ease tensions with the Trump administration and blunt mounting public backlash against AI, per the Financial Times.
- Sam Altman first pitched the idea to Trump early last year and personally suggested the 5% figure, arguing that giving the public a financial interest would be the best way to share AI's upside.
- At OpenAI's $852 billion valuation from its latest funding round, the proposed 5% stake would be worth roughly $42.6 billion; talks are in early stages and would extend to other US AI companies, though it's unclear if they'd agree.
- The Trump administration has already taken a 10% stake in chipmaker Intel and reportedly demanded Nvidia and AMD give the federal government a 15% cut of revenue from AI chip sales to China.
- Anthropic, a key OpenAI competitor, has been "repeatedly stymied" by the administration's hands-on approach — the Pentagon designated it a supply chain risk earlier this year, and export controls on OpenAI's latest models last month forced a market pullback.
- Senator Bernie Sanders has separately proposed a one-time 50% tax on AI stock value to fund a sovereign wealth fund, framing AI as a public resource.
Why it matters: OpenAI is offering equity rather than lobbying to manage political risk — a roughly $42.6 billion gesture that mirrors the Trump administration's existing pattern of extracting direct economic stakes from AI companies (10% of Intel, 15% revenue cuts from Nvidia/AMD for China sales). Competitors like Anthropic, already kneecapped by federal actions, may face pressure to match OpenAI's offer or fall further behind in Washington.
