July 2 (Reuters) - OpenAI has discussed giving the U.S. government a 5% stake, the Financial Times reported on Thursday, as AI firms face growing scrutiny in Washington over the potential misuse of advanced models and whether Americans will share in the sector's profits.
Under the proposal, OpenAI has suggested that other U.S. AI companies also hand the government similar stakes, the report said, adding it was unclear whether the other companies would agree.
Reuters could not immediately verify the report.
OpenAI and the White House did not immediately respond to Reuters requests for comments outside regular business hours.
Last month, President Donald Trump said he was exploring options to give the public a stake in leading AI companies, in response to concerns that individual Americans will not share in the sector's expected profits.
Earlier, OpenAI proposed creating a "public wealth fund" to invest in AI companies and distribute proceeds to citizens, while Anthropic said it was exploring a “digital dividend,” defined as payments to Americans funded by taxes on the AI sector.
The FT said, citing two people familiar with the talks, that OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and the firm's executives had suggested that leading U.S. AI firms allot 5% of their equity to a vehicle similar to the Alaska Permanent Fund, a state-owned corporation seeded with oil revenues that pays annual dividends to residents and helps support Alaska's budget.
Altman has discussed the stake sale with Trump, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, the FT said. He has also spoken to Democratic Senator Bernie Sanders in recent weeks.
The report comes after OpenAI delayed a full public launch of GPT‑5.6 last week at the U.S. government's request. That announcement came after the U.S. government ordered rival Anthropic to suspend access to its frontier AI models, Fable 5 and Mythos 5, for foreign nationals over national security risks.
The U.S. removed curbs on Anthropic's AI models on Tuesday.
Both OpenAI and Anthropic have confidentially filed for U.S. initial public offerings.
Reporting by Abu Sultan in Bengaluru; Editing by Nivedita Bhattacharjee
Source: Reuters