OpenAI courts Trump administration as its latest investor

Axios Axios —

OpenAI may give the U.S. government a 5% stake in the company, per the https://www.ft.com/content/7c803eab-8e80-4431-9a87-e943bf00e00b?accessToken=zwAAAZ8jH94Hkc98gD6rjoBEMdOah-lDvwDgCw.MEQCIDs8Drq2784t9EO7dNO60tKqNy-axAWfV0SYDxQtxlUPAiBhUdyW47NO2oXPJ-ifp6vV4YJNWo7wYlOSuwYdcYClPQ&sharetype=gift&token=d72303a2-2849-404f-9115-d89370c60588&syn-25a6b1a6=1" target="_blank">Financial Times. The proposal is in very preliminary conversations, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Why it matters: If the overture is taken up by the Trump administration, that would mean the government would have a vested interest in weighing whether or not to limit the release of an OpenAI model.

Catch up quick: OpenAI views the potential government stake as a way to give the general public a share of the upside of AI, and CEO Sam Altman has previously shared https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B21KxGs8zDI&vl=en" target="_blank">with Axios his interest in some sort of public wealth fund.

Zoom out: The potential investment comes as the White House is still deciding when OpenAI can release its most powerful models widely, through a regulatory process that Altman has https://x.com/sama/status/2070607488274358364" target="_blank">said isn't quite "optimal."

Between the lines: Investors tell Axios that the idea of giving a stake reads like a PR stunt aimed at making it seem as if the public could benefit from the AI boom just as the technology threatens their jobs.

Yes, but: The government's https://www.axios.com/2025/08/14/trump-intel-stake-semiconductor" target="_blank">9.9% stake in Intel, taken last August, appears to have paid off.

  • Its shares are up nearly 400% since then, although it has also come amid a broad rally for chip stocks.

Friction point: The Intel stake was acquired under the CHIPS Act.

A deal with the AI labs would likely require an act of Congress.

  • It's also unclear what a government stake would accomplish, other than giving the AI labs a closer relationship to what is currently one of their biggest hurdles: the government.
  • An investor in Anthropic and OpenAI tells Axios that the proposal reads more like a "political move" to gain favor with the administration than something that would actually create a shared benefit for the American public.

What they're saying: A government stake would be a "troubling milestone" that hurts competition between the labs, " David Sherman, AI and financial inclusion strategist at https://urldefense.com/v3/__http%3A//io.net__;!!Al82Z4c!0iM9era3UzqeHAPC8khMxFVMB3laKcMhSbvnKhzN94Xjxl5L4EEHRd0sWYiSyUrcKTIPV8tqQVDKqrZlg5lNtd0$" target="_blank">io.net, a decentralized cloud network, said via email.

  • It "gives one AI company a government stamp of approval whilst millions of developers, researchers and businesses are locked out by skyrocketing token prices and endless GPU queues," he added, referencing the challenge in accessing AI at current costs or chips at current supply levels.
  • It comes amid broader concern about whether the government is already curbing the competitive edge of U.S. AI labs compared with China by putting guardrails around model release timelines.

And if the goal is to share the financial benefits of AI, there are other ways to do that.

The bottom line: "The labs develop the technology, but citizens and their elected representatives must make the rules," Altman wrote in the Financial Times earlier this week.

Read full article at Axios →