Source: U.S. Officials Discuss Taking Financial Stakes in AI Industry Publisher: The Wall Street Journal | Author: Amrith Ramkumar, Berber Jin, Keach Hagey Published: June 4, 2026 | Archived: June 5, 2026

June 4, 2026 11:18 pm ET

WASHINGTON—Senior U.S. officials have discussed having the federal government take stakes in major artificial-intelligence companies, according to people familiar with the matter, after OpenAI Chief Executive Sam Altman pitched the idea to the administration last year.

Such a move would allow the government to share in the potential economic upside of the fast-evolving technology, give the AI companies a stamp of approval from those in charge of regulating their models and potentially temper rising anxiety about the economic fallout of the AI revolution as several AI companies prepare to go public. But any potential partnerships could also expose the U.S. government to possible volatility of the AI market. 

Some AI executives have warned that their powerful new tools could upend how people live and work and ultimately transform the labor market. Silicon Valley has floated a variety of proposals for how society could adapt to the new economic realities of the AI era, including the creation of shared income for the masses to the creation of a sovereign-wealth fund. 

Altman met Wednesday with Sen. Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.), who has said he plans to introduce legislation that would transfer 50% of the equity of the top AI companies to a public fund.

The White House didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Altman has long toyed with the idea of getting the federal government involved with OpenAI, asking whether it would be interested in funding the AI lab years before ChatGPT launched. In April, his company proposed creating a public wealth fund that would invest in AI companies and distribute the economic benefits to the broader public.  

The proposal called for the wealth fund’s profits to be given directly to citizens, allowing more people to benefit from the upside of the technology’s growth, including those not invested in the financial markets. 

Altman has floated the idea of a program that might work like the Trump accounts, the people said. The accounts are a new type of IRA for children that parents can set up when they file their taxes.

Senior government officials have preliminarily discussed taking direct stakes in AI developers since early last year as part of a broader effort to take a more active role in the private sector. The Trump administration has announced direct investments in at least 10 companies, including the chip maker Intel, and the president signed an executive order earlier this week that increases its oversight over the AI industry. 

OpenAI Chief Financial Officer Sarah Friar last year floated the possibility of the government backing loans tied to data centers. Altman later said the company doesn’t want federal loan guarantees, and Friar said the company wasn’t seeking help for its infrastructure commitments but was talking about a broader framework for an industrywide build-out.

The news outlet Notus earlier reported on the equity-stake discussions.

News Corp, owner of The Wall Street Journal, has a content-licensing partnership with OpenAI.

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Appeared in the June 5, 2026, print edition as ‘U.S. Eyes Taking Financial Positions in AI Industry’.

Amrith Ramkumar is a reporter for The Wall Street Journal in Washington covering tech and crypto policy. He previously covered clean energy and was a Journal markets reporter in New York who wrote about special-purpose acquisition companies, or SPACs, when SPAC mergers were a popular alternative to traditional initial public offerings. He also previously wrote about stocks and commodities, including battery metals such as lithium and cobalt.

Amrith joined the Journal as a markets intern after graduating from Duke in 2017.

Berber Jin covers startups and venture capital out of the Wall Street Journal’s San Francisco office. His articles focus on the money and people powering Silicon Valley, with a recent focus on artificial intelligence. He previously covered the same topic for the Information, where he won a Best in Business award from the Society for Advancing Business Editing and Writing.

Berber is originally from Scarsdale, N.Y., and graduated from Stanford University.

Keach Hagey is a reporter at The Wall Street Journal covering the intersection of media, technology and power. Her reporting explores how institutions and individuals wield influence in the new information economy, with a current focus on artificial intelligence and OpenAI. She is the author of “The Optimist: Sam Altman, OpenAI, and the Race to Invent the Future” (W. W. Norton, 2024) and “The King of Content: Sumner Redstone’s Battle for Viacom, CBS and Everlasting Control of His Media Empire” (Harper Business, 2018).

She was part of the team that broke the Facebook Files, a series that won a George Polk Award for Business Reporting, a Gerald Loeb Award for Beat Reporting and a Deadline Award for public service. Her investigation into the inner workings of Google’s advertising-technology business won recognition from the Society for Advancing Business Editing and Writing (Sabew).

Previously, she covered the television industry for the Journal, reporting on large media companies such as 21st Century Fox, Time Warner and Viacom. She led a team that won a Sabew award for its coverage of the power struggle inside Viacom.

Before joining the Journal, Keach covered media for Politico, the National in Abu Dhabi, CBS News and the Village Voice. She has a bachelor’s and a master’s in English literature from Stanford University. She lives in Irvington, N.Y.