Trump: U.S. stake in AI giants "could be a beautiful thing"

President Trump surprised tech CEOs by suddenly pushing the idea of the U.S. taking a small ownership stake in AI giants, so the American people share in the upside of what will be trillion-dollar companies.

• "There's something very interesting about it, where it almost becomes a partnership with the American public," Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One yesterday. "It's like you make them [partners] in this revolution. It would be a beautiful thing. ... It would make 'em rich."

Why it matters: OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has pushed this idea with the Trump administration over the past year. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) reignited the conversation this week when he proposed giving the public a "direct ownership stake" in top AI companies via a one-time 50% tax, paid in stock.

• Of course, industry advocates of the idea would favor giving up much less for an AI public wealth fund — 1-5% stakes have been kicked around.

Between the lines: AI is broadly unpopular in the U.S. Some industry leaders, and now clearly Trump, think the technology's image would improve if all Americans participated in this mind-boggling wealth creation.

Ahead of the expected stock offerings by Anthropic, SpaceX and OpenAI, Trump said there's "so much money, and it's so big, that there are concepts where pieces could be given to the American public, where the American public essentially becomes a partner ... with the companies."

• "We'll look into that," Trump said. "We're talking about it, where the American people can benefit from the success of AI. And by doing that, they're gonna like it better ... We're leading China. We're leading everybody in the world with AI, and we want to keep it that way."

The backstory: Altman has pushed the concept in private conversations with administration officials, then in a proposal for an AI New Deal, then on Capitol Hill this week when he visited Sanders and leaders of both parties.

• A "Public Wealth Fund" was one of the provocative ideas in OpenAI's "Industrial Policy for the Intelligence Age," out in April.

Between the lines: When a reporter asked Trump about the incongruity of embracing a proposal by Sanders, a democratic socialist, the president touted his economic populism. "As far as economics is concerned," Trump said, "we have certain things that aren't that far apart. People are surprised."