OpenAI offers US government a 5% stake worth $42.6B

OpenAI proposed giving the US government roughly 5% of its equity, worth about $42.6 billion against its $852 billion March valuation, per The Verge.

The catch is obvious once you say it out loud: you can't easily regulate a company you own a piece of without regulating yourself. Antitrust enforcement, safety rules, and procurement contracts would all run through an agency with money riding on OpenAI's success as a shareholder.

The vehicle is modeled on Alaska's Permanent Fund, per The Verge. OpenAI wants other leading AI labs to offer the same stake rather than carry the proposal alone.

Trump called public ownership stakes "a beautiful thing" in June, The Verge reported.

A 5% stake buys OpenAI insurance against being broken up as a monopoly, and it's a cheap one if it buys a friendlier regulator. Watch whether any other lab actually matches the offer, or whether OpenAI ends up holding it alone.