Technology

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

By Sydney TheCMO

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OpenAI Deep in Talks, Anthropic Sitting It Out. Senior U.S. officials have been in active discussions with major AI companies about potential…

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Two IPOs, Two Very Different Government Exposure Stories. Both companies are heading toward public listings. The numbers involved are staggering.

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Anthropic's Accidental Independence Play. Here's where it gets interesting. Anthropic's exclusion from the government equity discussions…

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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.

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

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

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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.

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But strained might actually be sellable.

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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…

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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…

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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…

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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.

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And yet — from an IPO narrative standpoint — that independence might be exactly what certain investors want right now.

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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.

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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…

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