Sam Altman wants to give the US government a piece of OpenAI. Specifically, 5% of the company’s equity — handed to a US sovereign wealth fund. According to the Financial Times, as reported by TechCrunch and Ars Technica, those talks are already underway with senior Trump administration officials including Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick.

The proposal is still early-stage and would likely need congressional approval to actually happen. But the intent behind it is already crystal clear — and that’s exactly what makes it worth paying attention to.

Buying Goodwill, Openly

The FT’s sources didn’t mince words about the motivation. According to TechCrunch, the donation would be designed to “secure good relations with the administration and address political blowback.” That’s not a side effect of the deal. That is the deal.

And there’s real blowback to address. Ars Technica notes that recent polling shows 70% of Americans don’t want AI data centers built near them, and half the country is more worried about AI than excited by it. A Pew Research Center report from June found that even younger adults hold negative views about how fast AI is advancing. Both political parties are watching those numbers — and so are the AI companies.

President Trump has publicly backed the concept. He told reporters he’d discussed “concepts where pieces could be given to the American public, where the American public essentially becomes a partner with the companies,” according to TechCrunch. OpenAI apparently took that opening seriously.

The company has also been building a public argument for this idea. An April policy paper titled Industrial Policy for the Intelligence Age proposed a wealth fund that could invest directly in AI labs, with returns distributed to citizens so that “more people can participate directly in the upside of AI-driven growth, regardless of their starting wealth or access to capital.” It’s a genuinely interesting idea — but releasing a policy paper and quietly negotiating with the White House are two very different things.

Sanders Isn’t Buying It

Not everyone is impressed with the 5% figure. Senator Bernie Sanders has his own proposal — and it’s a different order of magnitude entirely.

Sanders introduced the American AI Sovereign Wealth Fund Act, which would impose a one-time 50% tax on the stock of “systemically important” AI companies. He estimates that would generate roughly $7 trillion, which could fund direct payments to Americans or go toward healthcare, education, and housing, according to Ars Technica. Companies like Google and SpaceX, where AI is only part of the business, would be allowed to spin off non-AI operations to avoid the tax.

Sanders has met with Altman directly, and the gap between them is wide. Sources familiar with those talks told AP News, as cited by Ars Technica, that the two remain “far apart” on what a fair public stake would look like. Sanders has also argued that financial stakes aren’t enough — he wants a bipartisan Independent Commission for Democratic AI, with confirmed members who could use voting shares to block decisions that harm the public.

That’s a fundamentally different vision: not the government as a passive shareholder collecting dividends, but as an active check on AI company decision-making.

Why This Moment Matters Beyond OpenAI

OpenAI isn’t the only company in these conversations. Ars Technica reports that Google and Meta have also been approached about offering similar stakes. Neither has indicated agreement with the 5% figure, and Meta hasn’t even voluntarily shared its frontier AI models with officials for safety testing, according to a New York Times report cited by Ars Technica.

That’s the uncomfortable context here. If a 5% equity gift becomes the industry’s standard move for managing political heat, it could end up shaping how all AI governance gets done — not through legislation, not through independent regulators, but through private deals negotiated between tech CEOs and whichever administration happens to be in power.

OpenAI’s proposal might be the most politically savvy move it’s made in years. Or it might be a template for something much harder to undo. Either way, the talks are happening — and the outcome will matter well beyond one company’s balance sheet.