President Donald Trump said he will likely meet with AI companies at the White House next week to discuss what he called a federal government “partnership” that would allow the American people to profit in their success.
The president said Friday that the program, which could include sending company dividends to Americans, would help secure buy-in from a public that remains skeptical about long-term disruptions — including to the labor market — of the technology.
“There’s a concept out there, there’s so much money and it’s so big that there are concepts where pieces could be given to the American public, where the American public essentially becomes a partner with the companies,” Trump told reporters en route to an unrelated event in Wisconsin. “I have spoken to all of them.”
“We’re talking about it where the American people can benefit from the success of AI. And by doing that, they’re going to like it better,” he added.
Trump said he was potentially meeting with “all the big ones” at the White House next week, though he declined to name specific companies.
The policy concept, first reported by NOTUS, has been floated by OpenAI, which issued a policy paper backing a public wealth fund, and broadly discussed by Anthropic and billionaire Elon Musk, who runs xAI. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), recently proposed a bill that would create a 50 percent government ownership in AI companies.
Though the ideas vary, the goal would be to give Americans an equity stake in AI companies to offset potentially historic disruptions from AI advancements to the job market and economy — though skeptics point to challenges in a government regulating an industry in which it is also invests.
Both OpenAI and Anthropic are bearing down on massive IPOs, valued at over $1 trillion each.
“As far as economics is concerned, we have certain things that aren’t that far apart. People are surprised,” Trump said when asked about Sanders’ support for an AI profit-sharing plan.
Trump’s former AI czar, David Sacks, an anti-regulation figure who recently played an influential role in temporarily halting the White House’s efforts to address increased cybersecurity risks from advanced AI models, came out against the idea of AI equity stakes Friday, calling it an acceleration of “the corporate-government fusion we’re already sliding toward.”
“Conservatives rightly fear a Central Bank Digital Currency. They ought to be even more concerned about Central Government AI — a system with even more totalistic power over information, decision-making, and human behavior,” Sacks wrote on X.