Altman proposes handing the US government a 5% OpenAI stake worth roughly 42.6 billion dollars

OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman has proposed donating 5% of the company's equity to a US sovereign wealth fund, according to the Financial Times, with the idea that every leading American AI developer contribute a similar share into a single pool. The Russian-language technology channel AI ML Big Data relayed the same proposal, describing a national AI fund built from vendor contributions.

At OpenAI's March post-money valuation of 852 billion dollars, a 5% stake is worth roughly 42.6 billion. The structure is modeled on the Alaska Permanent Fund, which pays annual dividends to residents from oil revenue. CNBC reports that the stated aim is to secure relations with the administration and address political backlash, giving the public a direct financial interest in AI's upside.

The timing is the part engineers and investors should note. Reporting places the proposal days after Washington delayed a GPT release, which suggests the equity offer functions partly as a means of influencing regulators. The talks are preliminary, any formal action would likely need congressional approval, and Google, Meta, and Anthropic have not indicated they would participate, which undercuts the industry-wide framing.

It is worth stating plainly who benefits if this happens. Government equity would tie the state's fiscal interest to OpenAI's valuation, which could reduce future antitrust or safety pressure on the very firm it now co-owns. That is the concern critics raise, and it is why the other major labs have stayed silent rather than endorse a template that could later bind them.