The Trump administration is mulling an equity stake in OpenAI

Imagine checking your government benefits portal one day and finding equity shares of OpenAI sitting next to your tax refund. It sounds wild, but it might actually happen.

President Donald Trump told reporters on Air Force One that his administration is exploring deals with top AI executives to secure stakes for the American public, basically turning citizens into corporate partners.

According to CNBC, the administration is actively discussing taking a direct equity stake in OpenAI.

The public wealth fund play

The equity would reportedly help seed a "Public Wealth Fund," an idea OpenAI itself proposed recently. Under that framework, proceeds generated by the fund would be paid directly to citizens so everyday people can share in AI-driven economic growth regardless of their wealth.

This is not entirely Trump's brainchild, nor is it a sudden pivot. Bloomberg reported that OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has been floating government stakes in leading AI companies since early 2025.

It also matches Trump's playbook from last year, when the federal government acquired a 10% equity stake in Intel.

Strange bedfellows in Washington

What makes this surreal is that both sides of the aisle are suddenly circling the same prize.

Earlier this week, progressive Senator Bernie Sanders floated a one-time 50% windfall tax on OpenAI, Anthropic, and xAI, payable directly in company stock ahead of their potential IPOs this year.

Not everyone in Trump's orbit is celebrating. Tech investor David Sacks, who recently stepped down as Trump's AI and crypto czar to co-chair the president's science council, warned that forcing stock transfers accelerates an unhealthy corporate-government fusion.

Meanwhile, former Microsoft engineer Dare Obasanjo bluntly suggested on social media that Washington is simply laying the groundwork for a future government bailout of OpenAI.

Why it matters

We think this move represents a massive shift in how frontier AI labs protect themselves from regulatory and political backlash.

For Sam Altman, bringing Uncle Sam onto the cap table looks brilliant on the surface. If the public directly profits from OpenAI's upside, anti-monopoly scrutiny softens and access to massive subsidized energy infrastructure becomes much easier to justify.

However, the risks are enormous. Turning the government into an equity partner compromises fair competition. How can competitors like Anthropic or open-source builders compete on level ground against a player partially owned by the federal government?

There is also the financial reality. OpenAI is still burning billions to train next-generation models. Pitching this as a universal wealth dividend sounds noble, but if AI commercialization hits a speed bump, taxpayers could easily find themselves holding the bag for Silicon Valley's most expensive science experiment.