OpenAI has proposed handing the U.S. government a 5% stake in the company, the Financial Times reported Thursday, as the artificial intelligence startup seeks to defuse mounting political pressure in Washington. A 5% holding would be worth roughly $42.6 billion, after the AI lab closed a record-breaking funding round in March at a post-money valuation of $852 billion. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman argued that giving the public a financial interest in the company is the best way to share the upside of AI, the FT reported , citing two people familiar with the talks. Altman suggested a stake of that size in early discussions with the Trump administration, as part of a broader arrangement under which Washington would hold 5% of each of the leading U.S. AI developers via a government vehicle, according to the report. The proposed arrangement envisions other U.S. AI companies, such as Anthropic, Google and Meta , ceding similar stakes to the government through a sovereign wealth fund vehicle, the FT said. It is not clear whether any of these groups would agree to OpenAI's proposal. The White House, OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, and Meta did not immediately respond to CNBC's requests for comments. Pressure has been mounting on major U.S. AI firms as Washington grows increasingly wary of cybersecurity vulnerabilities associated with their models and rising competition from Chinese open-source models that are proving to be almost as capable and significantly cheaper than some of the top American models. Anthropic had disabled access to its most advanced Mythos and Fable models last month to comply with an export control directive from the government. On Tuesday, the company behind the Claude AI platform said it was cleared to restore access to the models after taking steps to resolve policymakers' safety concerns. OpenAI's reported pitch came after more than a year of talks about a possible government stake in the company, CNBC reported last month , with Altman first pitching the concept directly to the Trump administration in early 2025. In April, the leading model-maker proposed creating a " public wealth fund " to hold assets capturing growth in AI companies and distribute the economic benefits to the public. The Trump administration has previously taken stakes in private companies, investing in Intel Corp , IBM , and other quantum and critical mineral companies during the president's second term. The government obtained a 10% stake in Intel after a landmark $8.9 billion investment in the chipmaker's common stock in August last year. In May, President Donald Trump said he should have asked for a bigger stake in the company. Trump has described the U.S. taking an ownership stake in AI giants as "a beautiful thing" that would make Americans "partners in this revolution." CNBC's Ashley Capoot contributed to this report.
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