OpenAI Proposes Government Investment | Rewire News Morning Brief

OpenAI Proposes Government Equity Stake as U.S. June Nonfarm Payrolls Fall Short

1 | OpenAI Proposes to Offer U.S. Government a 5% Equity Stake, Valued at $42.6 Billion Based on Current Valuation

According to Axios and the Financial Times, OpenAI is in discussions with the Trump administration to offer a 5% equity stake to the federal government. Based on the latest $852 billion valuation, this stake is worth approximately $42.6 billion. Altman is using the Alaska Permanent Fund as a template, aiming to have all top AI labs distribute profits to the public through a sovereign wealth fund. Commerce Secretary Lutenick and Treasury Secretary Bezent are involved in preliminary discussions, but the proposal will require congressional legislation to be implemented. Senator Sanders had previously put forward a more aggressive version, calling for AI companies to give up 50% of voting shares.

This proposal comes days after the postponement of the GPT-5.6 release in Washington. The AI lab has found that the policy risks have become significant enough to affect product development pace, and exchanging equity for operational freedom is a new type of tech-political transaction. Before the regulatory framework takes shape, turning the government into a stakeholder in the meantime.

(Source: Axios / Financial Times / Tom's Hardware / CNBC)

2 | U.S. Adds Only 57,000 Jobs in June, Labor Participation Rate Falls to Five-Year Low

U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data shows that only 57,000 jobs were added in June, less than half of the Dow Jones consensus expectation of 115,000 jobs and below the May revised figure of 129,000 jobs. The unemployment rate dropped to 4.2%, but the labor participation rate fell by 0.3 percentage points to 61.5%, the lowest since March 2021. The leisure and hospitality sector cut 61,000 positions, with insufficient growth in professional services and healthcare to compensate. The combined downward revisions for April and May amounted to 74,000 jobs, revealing that previously reported job gains were overestimated by nearly a third.

Following the data release, the U.S. dollar weakened, gold surged over 2%, and bond yields declined. While the unemployment rate is decreasing, the participation rate is shrinking, indicating more people are exiting the labor market. The year-over-year wage growth for employed individuals is still at 3.5%, showing a diverging labor market, which could widen the Fed's interest rate cut window.

(Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics / CNBC / Axios)

3｜Anthropic in Talks with Samsung for Custom AI Chip, Becomes Second Lab to Fabricate Silicon in a Week

According to The Information, Anthropic is in talks with Samsung for a custom AI chip solution involving Samsung's latest 2-nanometer process. The plan is still in its early stages, and specific chip design and server integration details have not been finalized. Anthropic stated that a diverse hardware stack including Google, Amazon, and Nvidia remains at the core of its computing strategy. Reuters first reported in April this year on Anthropic evaluating the feasibility of designing its own chips.

Just a week ago, OpenAI released the Jalapeno inference chip designed in collaboration with Broadcom. The consecutive efforts by the two top labs to develop their own chips are not a coincidence. The year-over-year growth rate of custom ASIC shipments in 2026 reached 44.6%, nearly three times that of general-purpose GPUs. Nvidia still holds approximately 70% of the AI chip market share, but the direction of this share has already been set.

(Source: The Information / TechCrunch / Bloomberg)

4｜KoalaAI Completes $3 Billion Funding Round, the Largest in the Global AI Video Generation Sector

According to the South China Morning Post, KoalaAI, an AI video generation tool under Kuaishou, is set to complete a $3 billion funding round with a valuation of $18 billion, with Tencent participating. The company plans to IPO on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange within 12 months. The valuation was slightly adjusted from the previous target of $20 billion, but Koala's revenue data supported this pricing. The annualized revenue has reached $500 million, with first-quarter revenue exceeding 650 million RMB, 75% of which is from overseas markets.

Chinese AI video tools have earned substantial revenue globally. Kuaishou has therefore raised its 2026 capital expenditure to 26 billion RMB, with almost all incremental investment going into AI computing power. In this round of AI competition, the dividing line is not between countries but between scales.

(Source: South China Morning Post / Bloomberg / 36Kr)

5｜Microsoft Establishes $25 Billion AI Deployment Company with 6,000 Staff

Microsoft has announced the establishment of an independent business named Microsoft Frontier, investing $25 billion and involving 6,000 engineers and industry experts specifically to help enterprises deploy AI. The initial partners include London Stock Exchange Group, Unilever, Land O'Lakes, and Accenture. Just two days ago, Amazon AWS announced a similar $1 billion plan, while both Anthropic and OpenAI have also formed their AI deployment teams this year.

The bottleneck in the AI industry is shifting from model capability to implementation capability. Microsoft, Amazon, and OpenAI are all transforming "AI for businesses" into an independent business line. Two years ago, tech companies were selling AI tools; now they are selling tools plus teaching you how to use them. The models are no longer lacking; what's lacking is the implementation capability to make the models profitable.

(Source: TechCrunch / CNBC / The Next Web)

Also Worth Knowing ↓

During an interview with Reuters, Zuckerberg admitted that Meta's AI assistant development progress was below expectations. The AI assistant is the next product form that all major tech companies are betting on, and the slowdown in progress means the distance from model to usable product is greater than anticipated. (Source: Reuters)

At a launch event, a startup powered an NVIDIA RTX Spark with a miniaturized nuclear reactor, working with NVIDIA to build a 30MW closed-loop AI factory. The selling point is the closed-loop design that does not rely on local water resources. The energy demand of AI computing has led to the application of micro-reactors, as the expansion speed of the traditional power grid cannot keep up with data centers. (Source: Tom's Hardware)

SK Hynix announced an investment of about $71.25 billion in the semiconductor industry in South Korea, covering NAND expansion in Cheongju and the establishment of the Icheon semiconductor cluster. The demand for AI chips is reshaping the global semiconductor investment scale and capacity layout. (Source: Tom's Hardware)

Trump made a statement at the White House saying he will redefine America's allies based on AI prowess. AI capabilities are becoming a new power variable in international relations, leading to a reordering of priorities in the traditional military and economic alliance system. (Source: Axios)

IQM went public on Nasdaq with a valuation of about $1.9 billion, becoming Europe's first publicly traded quantum computing company, while acknowledging that the technology's prospects remain uncertain. On its first day of trading, it openly admitted the uncertainty of its future. The path from the lab to the public market for quantum computing is much longer than that for AI. (Source: TechCrunch)

Securitize went public on the NYSE via a SPAC, simultaneously tokenizing $295 million of its own stock on the Solana and Avalanche blockchains. The tokenization company backed by BlackRock demonstrated its IPO by tokenizing its own stock. The infrastructure layer of traditional capital markets is being infiltrated by blockchain. (Source: Fortune / CoinDesk)

The Wall Street Journal exposed an internal email revealing the breakdown of the relationship between Anthropic and the Pentagon. The boundary of cooperation between the AI company and the military is still being actively explored, with Anthropic being one of the most enthusiastic AI labs in advocating for government collaboration. (Source: Wall Street Journal)