News
Trump: US Government May Take Stakes in OpenAI and Anthropic, but Rules Out Nationalization
In a TIME magazine interview, US President Donald Trump said the federal government could take equity stakes in OpenAI and Anthropic, following the model of its Intel investment. He ruled out nationalizing the leading AI labs.
The US government may become a shareholder in OpenAI and Anthropic.
On October 6, TechNews, citing a TIME magazine interview, reported that US President Donald Trump said the federal government could follow the model of its Intel investment and take equity stakes in OpenAI and Anthropic. He also explicitly ruled out nationalizing the leading AI labs.
Asked whether he would take stakes in the two AI companies the way the government did with Intel, Trump answered: “I might.” He announced no stake size, deal terms or timeline.
The Intel precedent
To grasp the weight of that remark, look at the August 2025 deal.
The US government invested about $8.9 billion in Intel in exchange for roughly 9.9% of the company. The funding came from previously approved but undisbursed CHIPS and Science Act grants, plus Secure Enclave program money. Intel said the government would be a passive shareholder: no board seat, no role in corporate governance.
It was the first time the US government had used “equity investment” instead of “subsidies” to become a direct shareholder in a tech company.
OpenAI has been here before
Government equity in OpenAI isn’t a new idea.
OpenAI has reportedly discussed internally giving the US government about a 5% stake, though the talks are still at a preliminary stage. At OpenAI’s $852 billion valuation from its March financing round, a 5% stake would be worth about $42.6 billion. That’s a back-of-the-envelope figure based on the then-valuation, not a confirmed deal price.
The timeline lines up too: on September 27, Trump had dinner with Anthropic co-founder and CEO Dario Amodei, and the next day he gave the TIME interview where he floated the stake idea.
What it means for the government to be a shareholder
The reporting analyzes several layers of impact.
On one hand, government equity would bind the companies more tightly to Washington. In the context of compute competition and US-China tech rivalry, equity is a more direct form of participation than subsidies.
On the other, the questions are serious. If the government is both a shareholder and a regulator, how do conflicts of interest get handled? Can regulatory independence survive? When companies do business across borders, will they be treated as the “national team”? None of these have answers.
The most important caveat: Trump’s remarks show only that he is open to taking stakes — not that the government has decided to invest. Neither company has put any stake plan into motion.
From subsidies to stakes: a policy shift
Zooming out, the White House’s way of engaging with frontier technology is changing. In 2022, Congress passed the CHIPS and Science Act, and the tool was subsidies. By the August 2025 Intel deal, it had become equity. Now the discussion is extending to AI labs — a sign that “government equity stakes” are becoming a formal option in compute policy.
That means frontier models and compute infrastructure are moving from purely commercial assets to instruments of national technology policy. For the AI industry, this is a variable worth watching.