Trump backs the U.S. taking ownership stakes in major AI firms

Vice President JD Vance said that Trump wants the U.S. government to have a stake in the country’s successful AI giants. He backs the idea as a sovereign wealth fund, making him “a very unconventional person”

Vance shared Trump’s plan on The Diary Of A CEO episode on Thursday. Vance added that it was an odd stance for a Republican White House.

“The president is supportive of the United States owning these big AI companies,” Vance said. He added that Trump “likes the idea as sort of a sovereign wealth fund idea,” and called him “a very unconventional person” for a Republican to think that way.

Vance also said he doubted that taxes alone could spread the coming AI fortune to workers, even if these firms pile up trillions of dollars over the next ten or twenty years.

“I’m very skeptical of that,” he said. He called pure redistribution “a very modern… liberal concept” that could leave the poor as “subservients of the rich.” He suggested labor unions might be a better model. “You’ve got to give the workers a seat at the table,” he said.

Musk pushed back on X

In a post Saturday, he wrote that it would be “better just to send money directly to the people from the Treasury.”

On worries about inflation, Musk said that “so long as the increase in goods & services exceeds the increase in the money supply,” which he expects from AI and robots, “there will not be inflation.” The newly minted trillionaire went further: “In fact, my prediction is that we will desperately be fighting deflation!”

Mark Cuban weighed in Saturday too, looking at the plan to move half of the major AI stocks into a government fund.

He said the idea “is not a plan” by itself. Cuban pointed out that these same firms would still need to raise hundreds of billions more in capital, which made him question whether taxpayer-funded stakes would really help taxpayers.

He raised the same doubt about data-center spending. He also asked who could be trusted to speak for taxpayers in such deals. “Certainly not politicians,” he said.

The back-and-forth follows a bill from Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), introduced Thursday, that would tax major AI firms 50% of their stock into a federal fund. Sanders projects the fund would reach $7 trillion and pay Americans about $1,000 a year.

His American AI Sovereign Wealth Fund Act would make the leading AI companies pay a one-time stock tax to cover the cost.

Behind the scenes, senior Trump officials had already been talking about how to set up these stakes before the government’s export controls on Anthropic stirred up the industry. People familiar with the talks told Semafor that two Cabinet members had split ideas.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent wanted to use AI equity to seed Trump Accounts. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick preferred sending any equity into a sovereign wealth fund.

The talks are still early, with no decision made, and a meeting with industry CEOs that Trump promised earlier this month has not happened.

The idea remains a hard sell beyond OpenAI, which first pitched it last year.

In the past week alone, leaders at Microsoft and Meta have brushed it off. Trump told reporters last week he would gather “the top 12 or 15 executives very shortly” to talk about the industry “giving back something to the public,” but recent export controls could make any such meeting tense.

“What AI companies at all levels and structure need is proper guardrails and federal legislation on how we’re going to use artificial intelligence in the government,” said Caleb Max, head of the National Artificial Intelligence Association, last week. “I don’t think it’s infusing cash in them at this point.”

SpaceX’s strong IPO has cleared the way for OpenAI and Anthropic to go public, with both possibly valued near $1 trillion. Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.) called the proposal a “head-scratcher.”

Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) said of AI leaders, “I trust them like I trust the rest-stop bathroom.”

The smartest crypto minds already read our newsletter. Want in? Join them.