President Donald Trump is planning to meet the bosses of some of the country’s most notable artificial intelligence companies next week, with a proposal to take a direct financial stake in their businesses. Speaking on Air Force One, Trump said the goal of the US government investing in AI companies was to “create almost a partnership with the American public” – a move he claimed could improve Americans’ increasingly negative views of the technology.
“We’re talking about it,” Trump said, referring to conversations with AI leaders “where the American people can benefit from the success of AI, the American people will like it better.”
“Trump plans to meet AI leaders to discuss US government taking a financial stake in their companies.”
Although the president did not name specific companies, the biggest US AI players include Google, Microsoft, OpenAI, SpaceX and Anthropic. A spokesman for Microsoft declined to comment; representatives of the other four did not respond to requests for comment. Trump compared the prospective investment to the US government taking a 10% stake in chipmaker Intel last year, claiming the country has already made money on that bet.
Sam Altman, chief executive of OpenAI, this week travelled to Washington DC and met Senator Bernie Sanders, who recently said he intended to propose a sovereign wealth fund that would see the US take a 50% stake in AI companies. When asked about Sanders’ plan, Trump insisted he had been considering the idea for a year but did not dismiss it. “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 – a company expected to go public in the coming weeks – met senior White House officials a few weeks ago. The meeting came despite Anthropic being embroiled in a lawsuit with the US Department of Defense over contract terms, and signalled easing tensions. Anthropic this week publicly praised Trump’s Executive Order on AI, and Jack Clark, a co-founder, told the BBC’s Newsnight on Thursday that the company was “in daily conversations with the US government and we’re finding ways to be helpful to national security.”