In many ways, Sam Altman’s proposal is familiar territory. He first outlined a more radical version of this idea back in 2021, suggesting that all companies above a certain valuation — not just AI firms — pay 2.5% of their market value every year into a fund that distributes annual payments to Americans. Earlier this year, OpenAI described a narrower proposal that closely resembles what Altman is reportedly discussing with the Trump administration now. And the concept has broad political appeal: Senator Bernie Sanders has proposed giving Americans a 50% stake in leading AI companies.
What’s the reasoning here? For potential recipients, it’s twofold. First, AI learns directly from human-generated work — books, films, art — yet AI companies rarely compensate the creators of that work. A free equity stake could serve as a form of belated compensation. Second, the payout could help cushion the widespread fear that AI will trigger a labor market collapse (though economists disagree on this front) by providing a safety net.
How big a safety net is up for debate. Details of OpenAI’s latest proposal remain sparse, but let’s say the government distributed this equity stake directly to Americans. After its funding round in March, the company was valued at $852 billion, making a 5% stake worth about $42.6 billion today (OpenAI is reportedly delaying its IPO until it can reach a $1 trillion valuation — a tall order given its heavy spending on data centers and the fact it hasn’t turned a profit yet). Distributing that $42.6 billion equally among roughly 133 million American households would give each family about $320 in equity. But if it operated like other sovereign wealth funds, the government wouldn’t hand out equity directly; instead, it would let the fund grow and share a portion of the returns with everyone, potentially delivering larger payouts down the line — assuming AI companies ever become sustainably profitable.
If this dividend ever materializes, what’s in it for tech companies? Altman may be hoping the promise of payouts could shift public opinion a bit more in favor of AI companies. (A majority of Americans don’t trust companies to use AI responsibly, oppose building data centers in their state, and half are more concerned than excited about AI’s increasing role in daily life.)
But the bigger prize for OpenAI might be that the Trump administration loves making tech deals — like its equity stake in Intel and its slice of Nvidia’s sales to China, among others. Staying on the administration’s good side is crucial for AI companies right now (just ask Anthropic). It could mean avoiding having your models labeled a supply chain threat, or getting more support from the White House in fending off Chinese competitors.
My main takeaway? These plans currently function more as a narrative than a policy. Altman has been talking about some version of this idea for five years and reportedly pitched it to President Trump shortly after he took office — yet there’s still little sign of a concrete plan taking shape. Sanders’ more ambitious proposal is even less likely to gain traction.
But what these plans do reveal is just how unsettled the debate over AI’s future still is. Altman drew inspiration from the Alaska Permanent Fund, established in the 1970s to give Alaskans a share of oil revenue. That idea rested on two premises: oil is a shared resource, and eventually it will run out. Altman seems willing to concede the first point about AI. But he’d recoil at the second, having promised that AI will generate unprecedented wealth for years to come. Whether Americans ever receive a check is almost beside the point — the proposal’s real purpose may be to convince them that the AI boom will be big enough to share.
