Trump’s AI Equity Push Puts OpenAI at $852B Government Crossroads

President Trump wants a piece of the AI boom. Not metaphorically — he’s pushing for the U.S. government to take actual equity stakes in leading AI firms, including OpenAI and xAI. Anthropic’s name keeps coming up too, but there’s a catch: Anthropic isn’t actually part of these talks.

That absence is starting to look less like a snub and more like an accidental gift.

OpenAI Deep in Talks, Anthropic Sitting It Out

Senior U.S. officials have been in active discussions with major AI companies about potential government ownership stakes. OpenAI’s CEO Sam Altman has been talking to the administration since early 2025. OpenAI has even floated a formal structure for it — something called a Public Wealth Fund, which would be seeded by donated equity from the company. The Trump administration’s pitch to the public is pretty straightforward: taxpayers should get a cut of AI profits. Altman’s willingness to engage makes OpenAI the clearest candidate for that kind of arrangement.

Anthropic? Not involved. At least not yet. And the reason why matters.

The split goes back to a Pentagon request that Anthropic flat-out rejected. The military wanted unrestricted use of Claude, Anthropic’s AI model. Anthropic said no. Trump’s administration responded by halting federal business with the company and the Pentagon labeled Anthropic a supply chain risk. Anthropic challenged that designation in court and lost. So the relationship between Anthropic and Washington is, to put it mildly, strained.

But strained might actually be sellable.

Two IPOs, Two Very Different Government Exposure Stories

Both companies are heading toward public listings. The numbers involved are staggering. Anthropic filed a confidential S-1 on June 1, following a valuation of $965 billion from its $65 billion Series H funding round. OpenAI was valued at $852 billion back in March as it preps for its own offering. Together, they’re part of what some are calling a $3 trillion IPO wave in AI.

The timing of Trump’s equity push is, to put it charitably, complicated for OpenAI. If the government takes a stake, investors will want to know the size, the voting rights attached, and what strings come with it. None of that is clear yet. Trump plans to bring AI industry leaders to the White House soon to hash out details, but specifics remain murky.

Senator Bernie Sanders has already floated a 50% equity tax on major AI firms. That’s probably not going anywhere fast, but it’s the kind of political noise that makes institutional investors nervous. Governance risk is real when the federal government is a shareholder — or wants to be one.

The administration’s track record here isn’t zero. It took a 10% stake in Intel in 2025 and holds positions in IBM and other quantum technology firms. A comparable stake in OpenAI — say, 10% — would require shifting roughly $85 billion worth of equity from existing shareholders. That’s not a small ask.

Anthropic’s Accidental Independence Play

Here’s where it gets interesting. Anthropic’s exclusion from the government equity discussions wasn’t some clever strategic move. It happened because the company drew a line with the Pentagon and paid a price for it. Federal contracts dried up. The supply chain risk label stuck, even after the court fight.

And yet — from an IPO narrative standpoint — that independence might be exactly what certain investors want right now. A company that kept the government at arm’s length, even at a cost, is a different story than one that’s been in dialogue with the White House since early 2025. Cleaner cap table optics. Less regulatory entanglement. No immediate question about what the government gets to vote on.

That’s not to say Anthropic’s path is easy. It lost in court. It lost federal contracts. The Pentagon designation is still on the books. But for investors wary of government involvement in corporate governance, Anthropic’s position outside the equity talks is a real differentiator.

OpenAI faces the opposite dynamic. Altman’s close ties to the administration opened doors — federal contracts, policy access, a seat at the table when these equity conversations started. But those same ties now mean OpenAI’s IPO will carry questions that Anthropic’s won’t. How much does the government own? What rights come with that? Who else might push for a stake?

The White House meeting is supposed to clarify some of this. Until it does, Anthropic’s valuation sits at $965 billion with a freshly filed S-1, no government equity overhang, and a story about saying no to the Pentagon that some investors will find genuinely appealing.

OpenAI was valued at $852 billion in March.