OpenAI Floats 5% U.S. Stake Proposal As It Seeks To Ease Washington Pressure

OpenAI has reportedly proposed giving the U.S. government a 5% stake in the company, a move that would value the holding at about $42.6 billion and mark an unprecedented shift in the relationship between Washington and one of the world’s most influential AI companies.

According to the Financial Times, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has argued in early discussions with the Trump administration that giving the public a direct financial interest in the company would be the most effective way to ensure Americans benefit from the rapid growth of artificial intelligence. People familiar with the talks said the proposal forms part of a broader effort to ease growing political scrutiny of the AI industry in Washington.

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A Big Bet On Shared Upside

The proposal follows OpenAI’s record funding round in March, which valued the company at $852 billion on a post-money basis. At that valuation, a 5% equity stake would be worth approximately $42.6 billion, potentially giving the U.S. government a substantial financial return if the company continues to grow.

Whether the Trump administration is willing to pursue the proposal remains unclear. Neither the White House nor OpenAI immediately responded to CNBC’s requests for comment.

A New Model For AI Policy?

According to the Financial Times, the idea extends beyond OpenAI. The proposal reportedly envisions other leading U.S. artificial intelligence companies offering similar equity stakes to the government, although it remains uncertain whether competing AI developers would be prepared to follow that approach.

If adopted more broadly, the model would represent a significant departure from traditional U.S. technology policy. Rather than acting solely as a regulator, the government would also become a financial stakeholder in one of the country’s most strategically important industries.

Part Of A Longer Conversation

The latest discussions build on conversations that have been taking place for more than a year. CNBC previously reported that Altman first raised the possibility of a government stake with the Trump administration in early 2025.

OpenAI expanded on that idea in April by proposing the creation of a public wealth fund that would hold investments linked to AI companies and distribute part of the sector’s economic gains more broadly.

Government Ownership Is Not Without Precedent

Although unusual for the AI industry, government equity ownership is not without precedent. The U.S. government currently holds a 10% stake in Intel after investing $8.9 billion in the semiconductor company’s common stock. In May, President Donald Trump said he should have sought an even larger ownership stake, and in June he described U.S. holdings in AI companies as “a beautiful thing” that would make Americans “partners in this revolution.”

Taken together, the proposal suggests OpenAI is trying to reshape its relationship with policymakers as artificial intelligence becomes an increasingly strategic issue. Offering the government a direct share in the company’s future growth could help align public and private interests while easing concerns over the concentration of power within the AI industry.

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Cloudflare Sets New Default To Separate Search Crawlers From AI Bots

by THEFUTURE.TEAM

July 2, 2026

Cloudflare has drawn a sharper line between traditional search and artificial intelligence.

Beginning September 15, 2026, the company will change its default settings to block so-called mixed-use crawlers from pages that run ads, unless a site owner chooses otherwise. The policy applies to new Cloudflare customers, new sites created by existing customers, and all current free customers.

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A Clearer Divide In Web Access

The shift could materially reshape how AI companies collect web data for model training and agentic products. Cloudflare’s central argument is straightforward: most publishers want their content to remain visible in search and accessible through certain AI services, but they do not want that same material repurposed without compensation.

In Cloudflare’s view, the problem is not crawling itself. It is the blending of three different functions: search, agentic use, and training into a single bot that makes it difficult for website owners to set meaningful boundaries.

The Google Question

Cloudflare pointedly referenced the “world’s largest search engine,” an unmistakable nod to Google, arguing that it has access to roughly twice as much information as rival AI companies because it makes it harder for customers to stay discoverable without also being used for AI.

Google has disputed that framing. The company offers Google Extended, a crawler setting that lets publishers opt out of having content used for training and AI products such as Gemini apps and Vertex AI, without affecting visibility in Google Search. At the same time, Googlebot still crawls for Search and for AI-powered features such as AI Overviews and AI Mode.

Publishers Want Reach, Not Exploitation

Matthew Prince, Cloudflare’s co-founder and chief executive, said the company is moving quickly because the internet is now dominated by machine traffic.

“Now that the majority of traffic on the Internet is non-human, we must go further and act faster so that a sustainable ecosystem can emerge,” Prince said, referring to the recent milestone in which bots surpassed human traffic online sooner than expected.

Prince added that Cloudflare’s tools and partnerships are designed to give publishers more visibility and commercial leverage, while also rewarding AI companies that are transparent about how they use content.

From Pay Per Crawl To Pay Per Use

Cloudflare has increasingly positioned itself as a gatekeeper for publishers looking to assert control in the AI era. The company already offers tools to block AI bots, along with a marketplace called Pay Per Crawl, which lets websites charge AI systems for scraping.

That framework is now expanding into Pay Per Use, which Cloudflare says will allow publishers to charge AI companies when content creates value, not merely when it is fetched. In practical terms, that shifts the economics from extraction to monetization.

Cloudflare says the move may also reduce waste. Its data suggests more than half of crawl traffic from AI bots is spent revisiting pages that have not changed, consuming bandwidth and compute without adding fresh value for either side.

Early Partners Signal The Commercial Model

To launch the new system, Cloudflare is working with Ceramic.ai and You.com. Under the opt-in model, publishers can be paid when their content appears in Ceramic’s AI search results or when You.com accesses premium material.

Cloudflare says other AI companies can adapt the model to fit their own products. The broader message is clear: the era of unrestricted crawling is giving way to one in which access, attribution, and compensation are increasingly negotiated rather than assumed.

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