Sam Altman pitched the Trump administration on a US government ownership stake in OpenAI more than a year ago. Those talks are still active, CNBC confirmed on June 5, and they now represent the most concrete instance of federal ownership of a frontier AI company to move from think-tank proposal to active negotiation.
The structure under discussion is deliberately designed to avoid the word “nationalization.” Rather than the government purchasing equity, OpenAI would donate shares to seed a federally managed Public Wealth Fund, a concept Altman’s team outlined in an April 2026 policy paper. The fund would invest in diversified assets and distribute returns to US citizens, letting both sides frame the arrangement as a public-benefit gesture rather than a state ownership play. The political optics matter: the Trump administration has already taken direct stakes in Intel, IBM, and several quantum and critical minerals companies, so the donated-equity framing gives OpenAI cover that a straight government purchase would not.
President Trump confirmed the talks while speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One on June 5. “There are concepts where pieces could be given to the American public, where the American public essentially becomes a partner,” he said. Trump added he is meeting with AI companies “in the very short, very near future.” No formal terms have been agreed, and the details remain subject to change, per a source familiar with the matter who asked not to be named due to the confidential nature of the discussions. Notus first reported the recent round of talks.
The timing is structurally significant. OpenAI is currently preparing an initial public offering, with a valuation above $850 billion following a record funding round in March co-led by MGX, which is itself backed by Abu Dhabi’s sovereign wealth fund. A government entity on the cap table before an IPO creates a genuine complication: institutional investors and underwriters will want to understand the terms, the rights attached to the donated shares, and whether any government ownership creates regulatory entanglement or concentration-of-power questions during SEC review. None of those questions have public answers yet.
This situation also sets up a direct structural contrast with Anthropic, whose path to public markets runs through a conventional S-1. Anthropic is navigating IPO preparation through investor relations and regulatory filings; OpenAI is negotiating a government co-ownership arrangement before those filings are complete. Both companies are trying to solve the same problem: how a trillion-dollar private AI lab transitions to a sustainable capital and governance structure. They are arriving at opposite answers.
Sen. Bernie Sanders, who met with Altman in Washington this week, told CNBC he and Altman discussed the sovereign wealth fund concept. That a senator on the left and an administration on the right are both actively engaging with Altman on this question signals that some version of government participation in frontier AI upside has moved from fringe to serious policy conversation inside the beltway.
Trump signed a separate executive order on June 2 asking AI companies to voluntarily provide the government access to their models for up to 30 days before release. Altman publicly endorsed that order. The combination of a pre-release access requirement and a potential ownership stake puts the federal government in a position it has not occupied with any prior technology sector at comparable scale.
For builders and operators watching AI governance, the donated-equity structure is the detail to track. If it survives contact with OpenAI’s IPO process and SEC scrutiny, it becomes the template for how frontier AI labs and the federal government formalize a relationship that is already deeply entangled through contracts, compute subsidies, and regulatory influence.
Reported by CNBC (cnbc.com), published June 5, 2026, by Ashley Capoot and Kate Rooney.
