Most Americans want AI firms to hand half their stock to the public: poll
“In the eyes of the public, AI Sovereign funds are seen as a tool to distribute the gains from the AI industry back to broader society,” Benjamin Leff, Verasight’s chief executive, told CNBC.
Over the past year the Trump administration has acquired equity stakes in more than two dozen firms spanning semiconductors, nuclear energy, minerals, quantum computers and steel, The New York Times reported, and AI executives are increasingly asking whether they are next.
Sam Altman, the chief executive of OpenAI, has floated giving the government equity, including in Washington meetings last month and Trump has publicly raised the same prospect.
The administration has not settled on a formal plan, the Times reported, though officials have discussed taking direct stakes in AI companies or using their equity to seed new Trump investment accounts for children, according to people familiar with the talks.
Where it has already taken shares, the administration holds a portfolio worth billions of US dollars across the Pentagon, the Department of Commerce and the Department of Energy.
