Your family's 300 stake in OpenAI

Sam Altman wants Americans to share in AI's wealth. The proposal may be more revealing as a political narrative than as a policy plan. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman's oft-discussed promise that Americans will share in the wealth AI creates was in the news again last week. On Thursday, the reported that Altman is in talks with President Trump about giving the US government a 5% stake in OpenAI. In some ways, Altman's plan is old news. He wrote about a more radical version of this back in 2021, proposing that companies above a certain valuation (not just AI companies) pay 2.5% of their market value each year into a fund that sends Americans annual disbursements.