FT: OpenAI has proposed giving Washington 5% of its $852B business to ease AI pressure.
The idea borrows from Alaska’s oil fund, which shares resource wealth with residents.
Here, the resource is not oil, but future income from advanced AI systems.
OpenAI also wants other major AI companies to give similar 5% stakes.
Anthropic, Google, Meta, and others have not agreed to join this plan.
No deal exists yet. The mechanism would likely be: OpenAI gives shares to a government-linked fund, that fund holds them, and future IPO gains or dividends support public payouts.
The hard part is legality. The legal route is unclear, and a deal may need Congress, especially if the government creates a formal public fund.
The Intel deal made this idea less theoretical after taxpayers received a 9.9% stake.
OpenAI has already proposed a public wealth fund giving citizens AI-linked financial upside.
Shareholders matter a lot here. OpenAI Foundation owns 26%, Microsoft owns about 27%, and employees plus other investors own 47%.
A new 5% stake could dilute everyone unless the shares come from an existing holder.
So OpenAI’s board, Foundation, Microsoft, major investors, and maybe regulators would need to accept the structure.
The cleanest path would be non-voting shares placed in a public wealth fund, so the government gets upside but not control.
The messiest path would be voting shares, because then Washington becomes both regulator and part-owner.
