Trump Blindsides CEO Buddies With Plan for Wild Power Grab
President Donald Trump took his tech-billionaire buddies by surprise when he announced that he was considering taking a government stake in their artificial intelligence companies.
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Trump, 79, has kept a largely hands-off approach to AI companies during his second term. But that changed on Friday, when he told reporters on Air Force One that he was weighing how the government could take an active role in the booming industry.
“There’s something very interesting about it, where it almost becomes a partnership with the American public, and we’ll look into that,” he said, referring to the federal government taking ownership stakes in AI giants.
“I actually have a meeting scheduled in the very short, in the very near future, with—did you know that?—all of the companies,” the president continued. “And we’re talking about it, where the American people can benefit from the success of AI.”
He added that “all the big” AI companies are “coming to the White House probably next week.”
But Silicon Valley CEOs were caught off guard by Trump’s remarks, NOTUS reports, citing three people familiar with the matter.
Trump’s plan to meet with the companies was news to them, the sources said. NOTUS did not specify which companies were being referred to.
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Leading AI firms include Nvidia, SpaceX, Apple, Google, OpenAI, Meta, and Palantir. The companies’ CEOs have sought to ingratiate themselves with Trump, in an apparent effort to blunt regulatory scrutiny.
However, one tech billionaire, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, has been discussing with Trump the idea of the government taking stakes in AI companies, according to The Washington Post. Altman, 41, has reportedly floated a plan in which his company would donate a portion of itself to a government fund, with other AI companies following suit, since early in Trump’s second term, a person familiar with the outreach told the paper.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The president has shown a new, if tepid, willingness to have the government play a bigger role in the AI industry. Last week, he signed a long-awaited executive order asking AI companies to voluntarily submit their models for government testing up to 30 days before public rollout.
The executive order had been watered down amid infighting in the White House between warring factions favoring more or less regulation.
With his interest in government ownership stakes in AI companies, Trump bizarrely finds himself aligned with Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, a self-declared democratic socialist.
Last week, Sanders unveiled a proposal for the federal government to acquire major stakes in AI giants through a new American sovereign wealth fund, as well as representation on the firms’ boards.
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