A government stake in AI companies is no longer a fringe idea floating around policy circles — it’s now coming straight from the top. Speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One on Friday, President Donald Trump signaled that his administration is weighing the possibility of buying ownership positions in the country’s most powerful artificial intelligence firms.

A New Kind of Partnership

For Trump, the pitch is about more than economics. He framed a potential government stake in AI companies as a way to bind the technology’s fortunes to the public’s. “It almost becomes a partnership with the American public,” he said, suggesting that ordinary citizens would warm to AI if they had a financial reason to root for its success.

According to the president, executives from “all the big” AI players are expected at the White House as soon as next week to talk through the concept. The timing is no accident.

Why Now?

The conversation lands at a pivotal moment for the industry. Three of the field’s heavyweights — SpaceX, Anthropic, and OpenAI — are preparing to sell shares to the public. Those debuts could mint a fresh batch of trillion-dollar companies within months, putting enormous wealth into private hands.

This wouldn’t be the first time the current administration has stepped into corporate ownership. The White House has already taken positions in major firms, including chipmaker Intel, abandoning a long-standing reluctance to let government insert itself directly into private American business.

The Anxiety Driving the Debate

Underneath the policy talk sits a deeper worry: what happens to workers when machines start doing their jobs. Some figures in tech and politics fear that AI could supercharge economic growth while simultaneously displacing huge numbers of employees.

Supporters of public ownership see it as a pressure valve. The logic goes like this:

• If the government holds a share, the public reaps part of the financial upside.
• Those proceeds could help cushion communities hit hardest by automation.
• Spreading the gains might ease the resentment that comes from watching a handful of companies grow astonishingly rich.

Public sentiment suggests there’s an audience for that message. Recent polling paints a wary picture: more than 70 percent of American adults think AI is advancing too quickly, and 51 percent feel more pessimistic than hopeful about its long-term effect on society, according to a May survey from YouGov and the Economist.

Altman’s Quiet Campaign

The notion didn’t appear overnight. OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman has reportedly been raising the topic with Trump and White House officials since early in the president’s second term, according to a person familiar with the talks.

Altman’s concept, the source said, would have his company hand over a slice of itself to a government fund, with rival AI firms encouraged to do the same. The idea apparently took root after Altman spent time courting sovereign wealth funds across the Middle East and Asia, where governments routinely hold stakes in strategic industries. OpenAI executives, intrigued by that model, began considering whether something similar could work at home.

By April, the company had gone public with a related blueprint it called a “Public Wealth Fund” — a mechanism meant to let Americans without spare cash for the stock market still share in the industry’s gains.

A Rare Patch of Bipartisan Ground

Interestingly, the push for a government stake in AI companies has found supporters on opposite ends of the political spectrum.

Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont laid out his own version earlier in the week, proposing that the United States acquire significant holdings in top AI firms through a new American sovereign wealth fund — and even take seats on their boards. Sanders raised the plan directly with Altman during a meeting on Capitol Hill.

For Sanders, the issue is rooted in economic frustration. He argued that many Americans already feel the system is tilted toward the wealthy, and that AI only deepens that sense of helplessness. “People feel powerless,” he said, describing a country gripped by anxiety as working families struggle to get ahead while the rich pull further away.

The Pushback

Not everyone is sold. The prospect of Washington owning pieces of the nation’s most influential companies raises thorny questions about where corporate independence ends and state control begins.

David Sacks, a tech investor who previously served as the White House AI czar, came out swinging against the idea on social media. He warned that government ownership would push the U.S. toward the kind of censorship and surveillance associated with China. Nationalizing AI, he argued, would only speed up a worrying blend of corporate and state power.

He also aimed a pointed message at fellow conservatives tempted by more government involvement. While they may be right to feel uneasy about where AI is heading, Sacks cautioned, the regulations they’re now toying with could easily be embraced by those who have always wanted a bigger, more powerful government.

The Bigger Picture

There’s also a layered irony here. Several tech leaders who backed Trump in 2024 did so partly because they resented the previous administration’s efforts to regulate AI and extract data from their companies. Yet this very week, Trump signed an executive order creating a channel for tech firms to voluntarily hand the federal government early access to advanced AI systems, ostensibly to prepare for security risks.

For now, the major players — OpenAI, Anthropic, SpaceX, and Google, widely viewed as the leading publicly traded AI firm — have stayed quiet, declining to comment on either the proposal or the upcoming meeting.

What’s clear is that the relationship between government and the AI industry is entering uncharted territory. Whether the answer is direct ownership, a public fund, new taxes, or something else entirely, the central question is the same: as a small group of companies races toward extraordinary wealth and influence, how much of that future should belong to everyone else? The debate is only beginning — and next week’s White House gathering may offer the first real hint of where it’s headed.