There is a quietly radical idea moving through Washington. It deserves close attention in New Delhi.
OpenAI has opened talks about handing the US government a 5 per cent equity stake in the company. Sam Altman and other executives have proposed something larger, too: a government vehicle that holds a minority stake in each of America's leading AI developers. That could span Anthropic, Google, Meta, Nvidia and beyond.
Altman first raised the issue of government equity with Trump personally in early 2025, according to reports. He has suggested that the Alaska Permanent Fund could serve as a model for ensuring Americans share in the wealth created by AI, potentially through public ownership or equity stakes in AI companies, rather than simply distributing corporate profits as cash dividends.
Trump recently told reporters aboard Air Force One that taking stakes in American AI companies could become "a partnership with the American public." An OpenAI policy paper has already proposed a "Public Wealth Fund" to hold such stakes and distribute proceeds to citizens broadly, whether they own shares or not. Anthropic, notably, is not part of the current talks.
None of this is happening in isolation. The Trump administration has already taken direct equity positions in several companies this term, including Intel and IBM and a handful of quantum-computing and critical-minerals firms.
Senator Bernie Sanders has gone further. He has proposed a one-time 50 per cent stock levy on major AI firms. Across the American political spectrum, the state-as-stakeholder idea is gaining traction.
The idea has serious critics on both sides of the aisle. Nat Purser of Public Knowledge has warned that a government which is simultaneously shareholder and regulator faces a conflict of interest. It could grow reluctant to enforce safety rules if doing so dents its own holdings' value. Jennifer Huddleston of the Cato Institute argues that government equity in private firms erodes norms around the separation of state and market, with Washington effectively picking winners.
Washington is testing a completely new model. The government is not running businesses, nor is it just acting as a regulator. Instead, it is stepping in as a long-term, minority investor. It helps private companies build and compete by opening up international markets, using diplomacy, and buying their services. In exchange, the government takes a cut of the financial upside it helped create.
India should study this model closely. It may be exactly what a handful of India's own strategic sectors need. Historically, India's instinct in sectors of national importance was to build large public sector enterprises. That approach may have served in an era of scarce capital and thin private capability. But today's technology race rewards speed, entrepreneurial risk-taking and relentless innovation. This applies to AI, drone tech, space tech, semiconductors, quantum computing and rare earth minerals.
Public-sector ownership structures rarely reward those qualities. And Indian companies in these sectors are no longer competing on capability alone. Increasingly, they compete against state-backed ecosystems, China's most visible among them, where the line between private enterprise and state support is far thinner than in most free market economies.
Picture a framework where private companies and startups build world-class capability while the government backs them with procurement commitments, patient capital, diplomatic support, export facilitation and regulatory predictability. In return, the government would take a minority equity stake in a carefully chosen bunch of strategically important firms.
Governance would need the same care that Purser and Huddleston are demanding of the American proposal, to avoid distorting markets or blurring the state's roles as backer and regulator.
Interestingly, India already has a case study that shows such a model can work. Titan was set up in 1984 as a joint venture between the Tata Group and the Tamil Nadu Industrial Development Corporation. More than four decades on, TIDCO still holds about 27.8 per cent of Titan, a stake now worth close to Rs 1 lakh crore. It is arguably one of the most successful long-term equity investments any Indian state government has made. The lesson from Titan is that patient minority ownership in the right sector, held for decades rather than quarters, can generate enormous public value while leaving innovation, execution and competitive discipline entirely in private hands.
There is a sharper, more urgent reason for India to think about such an idea now. A government that merely regulates AI is, in theory, a referee. A government that owns equity in it has a direct stake in that industry's success. Washington has already shown it is willing to use state power to shape the global reach of its AI companies.
Last month, a US Commerce Department export-control action forced Anthropic to suspend global access to two of its newest models. Access was restored only once the controls were lifted. Washington can extend or restrict the footprint of AI models as an instrument of statecraft.
An equity stake would give the American state a direct financial reason to use it more assertively, in exactly the markets, including India's, where those companies compete for infrastructure deals and enterprise adoption.
This reflects an unequal dynamic for India. While the US relies on India as its primary engine for data and market growth, it restricts or monopolises the very compute and semiconductor infrastructure India needs to build its own sovereign AI.
India, then, needs to hold two ideas about this moment at once. The first is caution. As AI, cloud and compute increasingly resemble the pipelines and telecom networks of an earlier era, a more financially invested American state has a sharper incentive to see its companies dominate globally on its own terms.
The second is opportunity. The same model, adapted to India's own strategic sectors, could help build the national champions that reduce that dependency. It would also give Indian firms bidding for defence contracts, satellite launches or clean-energy partnerships abroad the credibility of a serious government stake standing behind them.
As tech turns increasingly geopolitical, governments everywhere are becoming more than regulators. They are investors, anchor customers, diplomats and strategic partners to their own industries. Washington is simply the most visible example of that shift. India does not need to copy the American model. But we have less excuse than most other countries to ignore the underlying idea.
(Vinay Sarawagi is Chief Content Officer at NDTV Network)
Disclaimer: These are the personal opinions of the author
