By Jennifer A. Dlouhy, Annmarie Hordern and Shirin Ghaffary

President Donald Trump expressed interest in the US government holding equity stakes in leading artificial intelligence developers, saying that he planned to discuss the idea of a partnership with AI companies’ executives as soon as next week. 

“There are concepts where pieces could be given to the American public, where the American public essentially becomes a partner with the companies,” Trump said Friday when asked about the idea by reporters aboard Air Force One. “There’s something very interesting about it, where it almost becomes a partnership with the American public, and we’ll look into that.”

Trump said he had already spoken to the companies about the idea, though he offered no specifics on those conversations. In his remarks, he addressed news reports that the administration would put the stock into a government-run wealth fund that would redistribute some of the financial windfall to the public and signalled his openness to that idea.

“We’re talking about it, where the American people can benefit from the success of AI,” he said. “It would be a beautiful thing. And it would make them rich.”

The president’s comments highlight how debate over how to share the potentially massive gains from the artificial intelligence boom is intensifying in Washington and around the world, ahead of a series of trillion-dollar initial public offerings by AI companies that promise to create a new class of tech billionaires. Calls for profit sharing have escalated in recent months as fears grow over AI replacing human work and jobs.

OpenAI Chief Executive Officer Sam Altman had floated the idea of government stakes in major AI firms with the Trump administration in early 2025, according to a person familiar with the matter. His proposal resembled later recommendations from the company, including the idea of donating equity to seed a fund together with other AI companies, said the person, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations. 

In response to a request for comment on reported discussions about the US government taking a stake in AI companies, OpenAI pointed to its public proposal in April calling for a wealth fund.

It remains unclear how the government would acquire equity in the AI ventures and how much stock might be handed over. Since Trump’s return to office, the government has invested in nearly a dozen companies, including several involved in the critical minerals industry, and pledged to take a stake of as much as 10 per cent in chipmaker Intel Corp.

Lawmakers and administration officials face growing pressure to address the risk that the emerging technology pioneered by Anthropic PBC and OpenAI could leave millions of Americans behind as increasingly sophisticated AI tools transform businesses across the economy and remake the workplace.

Sanders’s plan mirrors earlier calls by OpenAI and Anthropic for the creation of government-run wealth funds that would ensure AI wealth is shared equitably. On Wednesday, Sanders met with Altman on Capitol Hill, where the two discussed AI oversight and the growing role of tech money in politics this election cycle.

During his visit to Washington, Altman met with lawmakers from both parties, including Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson as well as unnamed White House officials. OpenAI officials said Wednesday that Altman was in town to promote his vision for public-private collaboration on artificial intelligence, without offering specifics on whether those discussions would include calls for a public benefit fund.

Fallout from the AI boom is fueling voters’ concerns about the economy heading into the November midterm election. Breakneck construction of data centres across the country by the top AI developers has driven up residential electricity prices, while wide-scale adoption of the technology looms as a threat to employment in a range of industries, including finance and tech.

Fears that the technology’s benefits won’t be distributed fairly have reverberated around the globe. Standard Chartered Plc CEO Bill Winters recently said he plans to replace what he called “lower-value human capital” with artificial intelligence. 

In South Korea, where memory chipmakers’ Samsung Electronics Co. and SK Hynix Inc. have soared to trillion-dollar market valuations, a key adviser to the country’s president has suggested using tax revenues generated by AI growth to fund what he called a “citizen dividend.” 

“A rare historical possibility now lies before Korea,” presidential policy chief Kim Yong-beom wrote on Facebook. “The possibility of becoming not only a country that supplies AI infrastructure, but the first country to return the excess profits of the AI era to human life.”