OpenAI has proposed handing the US government a 5% equity stake in the company, according to the Financial Times, as the White House and Silicon Valley’s best-funded startup edge closer to a deal that has been under discussion for more than a year.
At OpenAI’s $852bn valuation, struck in its record-breaking March funding round, a 5% holding would be worth roughly $42.6bn.
Two people familiar with the talks told the FT that chief executive Sam Altman has argued giving the public a financial interest in OpenAI is the best way to share the upside of artificial intelligence.
That framing tracks with OpenAI’s own public statements since early this year, when Altman first floated the idea of a government stake directly to the Trump administration.
The structure being discussed reportedly involves a so-called public wealth fund, a vehicle OpenAI first sketched out in an April policy paper that proposed pooling equity donations from AI companies and distributing the resulting economic benefit to citizens.
