President says Americans could directly benefit from artificial intelligence boom as White House considers potential public ownership model alongside upcoming talks with major AI companies
President Donald Trump said on June 5 that his administration is exploring the possibility of the United States acquiring a public stake in artificial intelligence companies.
Trump made the remarks in response to a News of the United States report suggesting that senior U.S. officials had discussed with leading AI firms the possibility of the federal government holding shares in their companies.
“There’s so much money that is so big that there are concepts where pieces could be given to the American public, where the American public essentially becomes a partner with the companies,” Trump said aboard Air Force One.
“I have spoken to all of [the AI companies]. There’s something very interesting about it, where it almost becomes a partnership with the American public, and we’ll look into that,” he added.
Trump said he and his administration are scheduled to meet with major AI firms in the “very near future” to discuss the proposal further.
“We’re talking about it, where the American people can benefit from the success of AI, and by doing that, they can like it better,” Trump explained.
Sen. Bernie Sanders also addressed the issue in an op-ed published Monday in The New York Times titled “A.I. Is a Public Resource. You Should Own Half of It.” In the article, Sanders said he plans to introduce legislation that would grant the American public a direct ownership stake in the country’s largest AI companies.
“It would create a sovereign wealth fund through a one-time 50 percent tax—not on the profits of OpenAI, Anthropic, xAI, and other companies, but paid with something far more valuable than that: the stock,” Sanders wrote.
According to Sanders, the proposed legislation—called the American A.I. Sovereign Wealth Fund Act—would give Americans a direct role in shaping the future of artificial intelligence while ensuring that the industry’s projected trillions in wealth are “used to improve the lives of all of us—not simply to make the richest people in the world even richer.”
When asked Friday whether he found it unusual that he and Sanders appeared aligned on the proposal, Trump said the two share some common ground on economic policy.
“People are surprised, but if you’ll take a look, many of the people who voted for Bernie Sanders … they went to me,” Trump said, referring to voters who supported him in the 2016 presidential election after backing Sanders during the Democratic primary.
Trump also signed an executive order on Tuesday requesting that AI companies voluntarily submit their frontier AI models for government review 30 days before public release.
In a post on X following the announcement, Sanders called it “good news” that Trump had “finally acknowledged AI poses a real threat,” after previously criticizing efforts to impose stricter regulations on the AI industry.
“The bad news? His executive order is voluntary and does almost nothing to protect Americans,” Sanders wrote. “Congress MUST act.”
