President Donald Trump plans to take a financial stake in America's leading artificial intelligence companies, he said on Friday, promising to “create almost a partnership with the American public” through direct government investment.
Speaking on Air Force One, Trump said he expects to meet the bosses of major AI firms at the White House, likely next week. He did not name specific companies, but the biggest US players in AI include Google, Microsoft, OpenAI, SpaceX and Anthropic – the latter two expected to go public in the coming weeks. A spokesman for Microsoft declined to comment; representatives of the other four did not respond to requests for comment.
“President Trump plans to meet AI executives to discuss the US government taking a financial stake in their companies.”
The president compared the prospective investment to the US government taking a 10% stake in Intel last year, a move he claimed has already turned a profit. Part of the rationale, he said, is to improve Americans' increasingly negative views of the technology: “Where the American people can benefit from the success of AI, the American people will like it better.”
OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman this week travelled to Washington DC and met Senator Bernie Sanders, who recently proposed a sovereign wealth fund that would give the US a 50% stake in AI companies. Asked about Sanders' plan, Trump insisted he had been considering direct AI investment for a year, but did not dismiss the idea. “Where economics are concerned, we have things that aren't that far apart,” Trump said. A representative for Sanders did not respond to a request for comment.
Dario Amodei, chief executive of Anthropic, met senior White House officials a few weeks ago, a sign of easing tensions between the company and the administration. Anthropic is currently embroiled in a lawsuit with the US Department of Defense over its refusal to accept broad new contract terms, which led to its excision from government operations. Despite the dispute, Anthropic publicly praised Trump's Executive Order on AI this week. Jack Clark, a co-founder, told BBC's Newsnight on Thursday that the company is “in daily conversations with the US government and we're finding ways to be helpful to national security.”