- Lead. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has entered preliminary discussions with senior Trump administration officials — including President Trump, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent — about contributing a 5% equity stake in OpenAI to a new US sovereign wealth fund, the Financial Times reported on 2 July.
- Fact. At OpenAI’s March 2026 valuation of $852 billion, 5% of the company’s equity would be worth approximately $42.6 billion; Altman has also proposed that other leading AI companies — Anthropic, Google, Meta, and xAI — contribute stakes on similar terms.
- Stake. The proposal is in very early stages, requires Congressional approval, and faces opposition from both sides: Republican scepticism of government equity ownership in private technology companies, and a rival Democratic proposal from Senator Bernie Sanders demanding a one-time 50% stock tax that could generate a $7 trillion fund.
The pitch and its political logic
Altman’s proposal, reported by the Financial Times and confirmed by Bloomberg and CNBC, frames the equity contribution as a way to make “American citizens partners in the AI revolution.” The structure would be modelled on Alaska’s Permanent Fund, in which state oil revenues are invested and dividend payments are made to residents. Trump described the arrangement as “a beautiful thing” in a conversation with Altman, according to the reporting, positioning the fund as a vehicle for broad public benefit from AI-driven productivity gains.
The proposal sits alongside a broader pattern of OpenAI managing its political exposure in Washington. Earlier in 2026, OpenAI restricted the rollout of GPT-5.6 following a request from the Trump administration, and forty-two state attorneys general subpoenaed OpenAI days after its IPO filing. The sovereign wealth fund pitch represents a more proactive attempt to align the company’s interests with those of the federal government rather than responding to legal pressure.
OpenAI’s financial position
The proposal comes as OpenAI is generating $2 billion in monthly revenue and claims 900-plus million weekly ChatGPT users. Its March 2026 funding round — led by Amazon, Nvidia, SoftBank, and Andreessen Horowitz — valued the company at $852 billion, making it one of the most valuable private companies in history. The Trump administration already holds equity in approximately 20 private companies, including a 10% stake in Intel now valued above $60 billion, establishing a precedent for government technology investment that the OpenAI proposal is explicitly invoking.
What stands in the way
Congressional approval remains the central obstacle. Republican lawmakers have shown scepticism toward direct government equity positions in private companies on ideological grounds, while Democrats are split between those who see the sovereign wealth fund concept as a viable redistribution mechanism and those who favour more aggressive wealth-capture tools. Senator Sanders’s rival proposal — a one-time 50% stock tax across the AI industry — reflects the scale of the ambition on the left while also illustrating how far apart the competing visions are.
CNBC’s reporting on the proposal noted that Altman also discussed the concept with Senator Sanders directly, suggesting the outreach is bipartisan in its ambition even if the political math is unfavourable. A formal legislative vehicle has not yet been introduced, and the OpenAI IPO — which Altman has said the company will pursue — would add complexity to any equity-transfer arrangement given the need to reconcile public shareholder rights with a government stake.