Alaska Permanent Fund

OpenAI's July 2026 proposal to hand the US government a 5% equity stake, worth about $42.6bn at its March valuation, was explicitly structured as a public wealth fund modelled on the Alaska Permanent Fund.

The Alaska Permanent Fund was created in 1976 as a sovereign-wealth vehicle that converts a portion of Alaska's oil revenues into a permanent Public Investment Fund, paying every eligible resident an annual dividend. It is one of the oldest and most cited examples of turning a depleting or contested resource into a durable, broadly shared public asset.

OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman's pitch borrows that 1976 precedent to frame AI's economic disruption in similar terms: a one-off structural transfer of value to the public, rather than an ongoing jobs guarantee or redistribution scheme. The framing has become a reference point in the wider debate over how governments should capture value from AI, alongside rival proposals such as Senator Bernie Sanders' one-time 50% AI-stock tax.