OpenAI floats giving the US government a 5 percent stake to smooth its path to an IPO

Handing a government equity instead of just paying taxes or following rules is a genuinely new move, and it blurs the line between a regulated company and a state asset. If it works, OpenAI buys political cover and a powerful ally right as scrutiny of frontier labs intensifies. If it spreads, the next fight is whether a lab that partly answers to shareholders in Washington can still be trusted by users everywhere else.