The idea is unusual enough that it took a moment to register: the United States government, owning a slice of the companies building frontier AI.
According to a report by NOTUS, senior US officials have held preliminary discussions with major AI companies about exactly that, the federal government acquiring shares in the firms at the centre of the technology it is also trying to regulate.
The thread runs through OpenAI. Sam Altman, the company’s chief executive, who has spent recent weeks in Washington urging Congress to fund AI testing rather than require model approvals, has discussed the stake concept with senior Trump administration officials periodically since the president’s second term began, NOTUS reported, having first pitched it directly to Donald Trump in early 2025 and raised it again with officials in recent weeks.
The discussions, per the report, have centred on firms voluntarily ceding shares to the government rather than the government buying in.
What the government would do with the returns is part of the pitch. One option discussed is directing the proceeds to public purposes, including a dividend paid to all American households, a framing that turns government ownership of AI into a mechanism for distributing the technology’s gains directly to citizens.
