And now, here’s Ian…

Back in April, when Sam Altman floated the idea of a sovereign wealth fund to provide U.S. citizens “with a stake in A.I.-driven economic growth,” he probably didn’t expect to capture the interest of both Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump. Altman had been on something of a goodwill tour, testing a softer, more human policy message in Washington. But where OpenAI offered an inch, Sanders wanted a mile. On June 1, the Vermont senator pitched a one-time, 50 percent tax on the largest A.I. companies in the U.S.—paid in stock, not cash. “The federal government would have the power, through its voting shares and an equal representation on each company’s board, to block decisions that hurt our citizens and to push for policies that help them,” Sanders wrote. Nationalization, in other words.

Less than a week later, Altman met privately with Sanders on Capitol Hill, where he expressed his general agreement with the notion that the public should have equity in A.I. companies, although he couldn’t support a number as high as 50 percent. And, naturally, he doesn’t want his company to be nationalized. According to an industry source, OpenAI’s preference would be for the government to establish something akin to the Alaska Permanent Fund, which invests the state’s oil and gas revenues into a diverse range of assets and pays each resident an annual dividend. OpenAI, which didn’t return a request for comment, has also proposed new safety nets, investments in workforce development, and tax modernization—all solid ideas that seem designed to stave off the pitchforks.

Whatever form an eventual partnership might take, the idea itself seems to have reached escape velocity. On June 5, aboard Air Force One, Trump told reporters that he planned to meet with major A.I. firms to discuss taking “pieces” of their companies (although this was news, apparently, to the A.I. firms). “There’s something very interesting about it, where it almost becomes a partnership with the American public, where the American people can benefit from the success of A.I.,” the president said. The White House didn’t respond to a request for comment on whether the meetings have taken or will take place.

In some ways, these conversations aren’t entirely surprising. As one industry source told me, A.I. developers have long believed that nationalization was inevitable, even though the concept hadn’t gained any real political traction until now. Vinod Khosla, the legendary venture investor, broached the topic in October, although his pitch was for 10 percent stakes rather than 50. Meanwhile, in a recent essay by Dario Amodei, the Anthropic chief argued that if A.I. does end up having a permanently negative impact on employment, “long-term income support” would likely be necessary. “Universal basic income could be financed through taxes on relevant companies or raising the capital gains tax,” he wrote. “Universal capital accounts offer another vehicle. Broadly speaking, fast economic growth should create the tax base for shared prosperity.” Elon Musk, for his part, has endorsed the idea of a universal basic income—an idea that Altman had also supported until very recently, when he started talking up the idea of universal basic… access to compute.

Anyway, not everyone thinks the idea is so clear-cut. Andrew Metrick, the prominent Yale economist, told me that the government tends to make “poor investment decisions and is a lousy overseer of private companies,” adding that “government ownership of private firms often leads to corruption, mismanagement, and lots of wasted taxpayer money.” Despite this, he believes we’re “still in the early stages of what is the most significant technological transformation in human history. If we are going to survive as a society, we’ll need to figure out some way to transfer some of those windfall returns to ordinary people.” Metrick would prefer this done through taxation of corporate profits, but the scale of the predicted societal impact of A.I. has him “willing to seriously consider a heretical position that would include some government ownership of private firms during this massive transition.”

David Sacks, Trump’s former A.I. czar, is also staunchly opposed to nationalizing these companies. “The C.E.O.s of the leading A.I. labs have told us repeatedly that they will cause massive job loss,” he wrote on X, adding that it’s unsurprising that Sanders’ proposal is resonating across the political spectrum. But, he said, the “nationalization of A.I. will accelerate the corporate-government fusion we’re already sliding toward.” Robert Winterton, the V.P. of public affairs at industry group NetChoice, agreed: “This kind of backdoor nationalization is a direct threat to free speech, giving bureaucrats the leverage to censor viewpoints and control how Americans get their information,” he told me.

If these conversations move forward, Adam Thierer, a senior fellow at the R Street Institute, told me that he expects the administration to face resistance from corners of his coalition that bristle at anything resembling socialist policy. “It’s unclear what happens next,” he said. Once you start nationalizing industries, where does the project end?

In some ways, Trump has already crossed that Rubicon. Since 2025, his administration has inked more than a dozen such deals, including paying $8.9 billion for a 10 percent stake in Intel. In most of those cases, however, the government was ostensibly trying to orchestrate some kind of industrial policy—supporting chipmakers and mining companies that are strategically important. The same argument might be made for A.I. on national security grounds. But unlike those other sectors, Big Tech hardly needs government backing to thrive. As former White House economics advisor Peter Harrell told me, A.I. companies clearly have no trouble raising money—and they’re not earning much revenue in the form of government contracts, either.

The pursuit of equity stakes, Harrell continued, would also raise a bunch of thorny legal and political questions. Would Republicans be okay with Sanders being seated on the board of OpenAI? Conversely, would Democrats be okay with, say, Brendan Carr on the board of Anthropic? And would the equity be a gift to the government, or would the government pay for it? The latter, Harrell said, would make any agreement start to resemble a bailout. “I’m actually quite willing to believe we are about to have some fairly substantial societal transformations as a result of A.I.,” Harrell said. “I’m skeptical that government equity stakes in the A.I. companies are the right way to raise that revenue.”

He continued: “This idea of equity seems to be a shiny object that policymakers are latching on to because they think it’ll somehow magically deliver money for the government, and seems easier than taxing and regulating,” he said. “I think, at the end of the day, we’re not likely to see the government taking a lot of equity here, and over the long term, it would be more effective for policymakers to get their act together and pass some taxes and regulations.”

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