White House Eyes AI Equity Fund After Altman's Capitol Hill Visit — Sanders Wants 50%, OpenAI Wants Less
The Trump administration began active internal discussion of an AI sovereign wealth fund structure following Sam Altman’s visit to Capitol Hill this week, according to the Financial Times. The mechanism under consideration would require frontier AI companies to donate a small slice of equity into a publicly held fund, which would then distribute gains to Americans through individual accounts or dividends rather than through direct government ownership.
How the Structure Works
The proposed fund differs from prior government equity acquisitions. When the Trump administration took a $9B stake in Intel, the US government held equity directly. The AI wealth fund model would hold shares on behalf of individual citizens, who would receive the fund’s returns — structurally closer to a sovereign wealth fund than a government equity position.
OpenAI has already proposed a Public Wealth Fund as part of its superintelligence transition blueprint. OpenAI said the fund could “invest in diversified, long-term assets” and enable citizens to participate in the “upside” of AI growth, with returns passing directly to the public.
Sanders Goes Further
Senator Bernie Sanders announced the American AI Sovereign Wealth Fund Act, which takes a harder position. The bill would impose a one-time 50% equity transfer from major frontier AI companies, paid in stock rather than cash, into a federally managed fund. Americans would receive direct payments or dividends from the fund.
OpenAI’s own proposal involves a much smaller equity slice. The gap between the two approaches reflects a structural tension: AI companies want a political accommodation that preserves their cap tables, while Sanders-aligned critics argue the wealth generated by systems trained on public data and funded by public research should return to the public at scale.
The Political Calculus
Both camps share one pressure point. Voters have become measurably hostile to AI on two dimensions: job displacement and the resource cost of data centres on local power grids and tax bases. AI companies, by contrast, need Washington for infrastructure permitting, federal procurement contracts, and a regulatory framework that keeps state-level fragmentation at bay.
The equity fund concept is an attempt to break that impasse — visible wealth redistribution in exchange for regulatory accommodation.
The Trump administration has precedent for direct tech equity stakes. Its $9B Intel investment and positions in IBM and quantum computing companies during the current term establish a pattern. The difference is that the AI wealth fund, as proposed by both OpenAI and the White House, would avoid direct government ownership of AI company equity, routing gains through a fund structure that holds shares for individual citizens.
Timeline
No bill language or timeline for a White House executive action was disclosed. The FT characterised the proposal as gaining internal traction following Altman’s Capitol Hill visit. Goldman Sachs separately raised its combined capex forecast for the four largest hyperscalers to $5.3 trillion between 2025 and 2030, which gives the wealth fund proposal a concrete revenue base to argue over.
Senate passage of Sanders’ 50% transfer bill is not viewed as likely in the current session. The more probable near-term outcome is an executive action or voluntary agreement with a smaller equity component, structured to give the White House a political deliverable on AI concentration before the 2026 midterms.