TRUMP WANTS THE U.S. GOVERNMENT TO OWN A STAKE IN OPENAI — SAM ALTMAN IS ON BOARD Sam Altman has been pitching the idea to Trump since early 2025, and this week the president confirmed the talks are real. Speaking aboard Air Force One on Friday, Trump told reporters that a deal giving the federal government a direct ownership stake in OpenAI is under active discussion and described the concept as making the American public a partner in the company. The framework being floated would have OpenAI voluntarily donate equity to a new Public Wealth Fund managed at the federal level. In exchange, the company would receive regulatory goodwill and access to federal infrastructure. The discussions reportedly extend to other frontier AI companies as well, though Anthropic has been kept out due to a running dispute with the Trump administration after the company refused to let the Pentagon use its systems without safety guardrails. The political convergence here is remarkable. Bernie Sanders proposed a bill last week that would force AI companies to hand over 50 percent of their stock to the public. Trump and Altman are proposing something voluntary and smaller, but the underlying idea is the same. Both sides of the aisle are now arguing that the federal government should own a piece of the most valuable private technology companies in history. That conversation is not going away anytime soon. Keywords: Trump OpenAI stake, US government AI ownership, Sam Altman Public Wealth Fund, AI nationalization