Hello and welcome to Eye on AI. Beatrice Nolan here, filling in for AI editor Jeremy Kahn, who is in Aspen at Fortune Brainstorm Tech. In this edition…The plan to give Americans a stake in AI…OpenAI files a confidential S-1 with the SEC…Anthropic rings the alarm on “recursive self-improvement'”..and AI consciousness goes mainstream.
Last Friday, President Donald Trump surprised reporters aboard Air Force One by suggesting that the U.S. government may take direct equity stakes in leading AI companies. “There are concepts where pieces could be given to the American public, where the American public essentially becomes a partner,” he told them. “You make them a partnership in this revolution.”
The remark, which seemingly came out of nowhere, dragged back a debate that first emerged early last year. According to reports, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman had been privately pitching the idea of government ownership to administration officials since early 2025, and had revisited it with senior officials in Washington this week as part of broader talks about AI regulation.
Trump and Altman aren’t the only ones floating the idea of government involvement in the AI industry. In an unusual ideological convergence, Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) proposed a one-off 50% tax raid on AI labs while Steve Bannon, Trump’s former chief strategist, went further, arguing the government should force AI companies to hand over 50% of their equity.
