Donald Trump is planning to meet the bosses of some of the country’s biggest artificial intelligence companies next week at the White House to discuss the government taking a financial stake in their future. He said the idea is to create “almost a partnership with the American public.”
The proposal matters now because it would pull Washington closer to one of the most valuable parts of the market just as AI stocks keep powering gains on Wall Street. Trump said he expects to sit down with leaders of major AI companies next week and that the public should be able to share in the upside if the technology keeps expanding.
He framed the idea as a way for taxpayers to benefit directly from the industry’s growth, saying the American people can profit from AI’s success and would “like it better” if the government invested in the companies themselves. He also compared the plan with last year’s move by the US government to take a 10% stake in Intel, saying the country has already made money on that investment.
The list of companies that could come into view includes Google, Microsoft, OpenAI, SpaceX and Anthropic, some of the most closely watched names in the sector. SpaceX and Anthropic are expected to go public in the coming weeks, which makes any talk of federal ownership or investment especially sensitive for investors trying to judge how far the government wants to go. Trump said of the broader discussion: “We’re talking about it.”
That public embrace of AI is not happening in a vacuum. Sam Altman traveled to Washington this week and met Senator Bernie Sanders, who recently said he planned to propose a kind of sovereign wealth fund that would give the United States a 50% stake in AI companies. Trump also said he had been considering the government investing in AI for a year, suggesting the idea has been moving through the political system for some time.
Anthropic illustrates the awkward overlap between cooperation and conflict. The company met senior White House officials a few weeks ago, praised President Trump’s executive order on AI this week and, on Thursday, Jack Clark said Anthropic was “in daily conversations with the US government and we’re finding ways to be helpful to national security.” At the same time, Anthropic is embroiled in a lawsuit with the US Department of Defense over its refusal to accept broad new contract terms and its later removal from government operations.
Trump’s next step is straightforward, if not yet fully defined: a White House meeting next week with AI company leaders. What remains unresolved is which executives will be in the room and what form any government stake would take, whether it looks like a direct investment, a partnership or something closer to the 50% fund idea now being floated in Washington.
