OpenAI proposes 5% U.S. government stake to ease political pressure

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.