President Donald Trump has confirmed he is in discussions with AI companies about arrangements that would give the American public a financial stake in the industry’s growth. While Trump did not name specific companies, CNBC reported that the administration has been in talks with OpenAI about a potential government equity stake, some of which could seed a proposed Public Wealth Fund that OpenAI has outlined as a mechanism for distributing AI-driven returns directly to citizens.
CEO Sam Altman has reportedly been exploring the concept of government stakes in major AI companies since early 2025. The idea has found unexpected cross-party traction: Senator Bernie Sanders separately proposed a one-time 50 percent stock tax on companies including OpenAI, Anthropic, and xAI, arguing it would give the public a direct role in shaping AI’s future. Former Trump AI adviser David Sacks, now co-chairing the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, acknowledged the idea’s appeal while warning it risks deepening corporate-government entanglement.
Against that political backdrop, OpenAI is accelerating its commercial push ahead of a potential IPO. The company is preparing a revamped ChatGPT described internally as a super app, combining coding tools, AI agents, and personalised assistance into a single gateway product. Thibault Sottiaux, who leads OpenAI’s core product and platform, said the goal is a personal agent capable of helping users across every aspect of their professional and personal lives.
OpenAI has also launched Lockdown Mode for ChatGPT Business and eligible personal accounts, a security feature that disables live web browsing, image retrieval, deep research, and agent mode to reduce the risk of sensitive data being exposed through prompt injection attacks hidden in web pages or uploaded files.
