Your family’s $300 stake in OpenAI
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- Sam Altman is in talks with President Trump about giving the US government a 5% stake in OpenAI, per a Financial Times report last Thursday.
- Altman floated a broader version of this idea in 2021 — every company above a certain valuation paying 2.5% of its market value annually into a fund that disburses to Americans — and OpenAI described a narrower version in April.
- Senator Bernie Sanders has separately proposed giving Americans a 50% stake in top AI companies, underscoring the idea's cross-party appeal.
- After OpenAI's March funding round valued it at $852 billion, a 5% stake would be worth about $42.6 billion — roughly $320 if split equally among the 133 million American households.
- The Trump administration has made similar equity deals, including stakes in Intel and a share of Nvidia's sales to China; staying in the administration's good graces is critical for AI companies, with the article citing Anthropic as a cautionary example.
- Alaska's Permanent Fund — set up in the 1970s to share oil wealth with residents — inspired Altman's pitch, but unlike finite oil, he has promised AI will generate extraordinary wealth for decades.
- Public skepticism is widespread: a majority of Americans don't trust AI companies to use AI responsibly, oppose data center construction in their area, and half say they are more concerned than excited about AI's spread into daily life.
Why it matters: The $42.6B math reveals modest direct payouts — about $320 per US household — so the proposal's real value for Altman is political currency: a majority of Americans already distrust AI companies and oppose data centers, and OpenAI is reportedly delaying its IPO until it hits a $1 trillion valuation, making White House goodwill a strategic asset.
