U.S. President Donald Trump said Friday that he is reviewing a plan for artificial intelligence (AI) companies to give a portion of their equity to the American people, and announced he would hold a meeting with company executives at the White House within a week.
Meeting with reporters aboard Air Force One, Trump said, "Because they have so much money and are so large, they can give some of the (equity) to Americans." He stressed, "The people will benefit from AI's success and will come to like AI even more."
In response, the U.K.'s Financial Times (FT) reported that OpenAI, which operates a charitable fund of more than $200 billion (about 312 trillion won), recently proposed to Trump administration officials a plan to provide company shares to the government. Citing sources, the FT explained that the approach would not involve the U.S. government directly owning the stake, but rather ordinary citizens owning shares individually.
U.S. broadcaster CNBC reported that a public asset fund plan is under discussion. Under this approach, OpenAI would donate equity to create a fund, which would then invest in various assets.
Brad Gerstner, CEO of Altimeter Capital and a major investor in OpenAI and Anthropic, said, "We are encouraging companies to donate shares," adding, "This could be delivered to Americans through 'Trump Accounts' (government-backed accounts in the names of newborns)."
Trump's remarks surprised the industry because the idea originated from an equity-sharing concept that was initially a minority view held by opposing-camp politicians such as Bernie Sanders. Sanders, a leading progressive politician in the United States, said on the 2nd of this month that he would introduce a bill to distribute 50% of AI company stakes to the public, and on the 4th he met with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman to discuss the issue.
Trump's move is interpreted as a means to control the risks of the AI industry and to enhance the sustainability of an AI sector mired in losses. However, concerns are also being raised about an unspecified large number of citizens acquiring stakes. David Sacks, the former White House adviser dubbed the "AI czar," sharply criticized Sanders' bill, saying, "Nationalizing AI would only accelerate collusion between corporations and the government." As it happens, Sriram Krishnan, an adviser who is the architect of the second Trump administration's AI policy and a close confidant of former adviser Sacks, disclosed plans to resign at the end of this month.
