🍭 The $42B Voluntary Tax Is Here 💰

Good morning.
OpenAI just offered Uncle Sam a slice of the company.
Somewhere, a senator is Googling: "what is equity?"

Let’s dive in 👇

🍭 What’s Cookin’:

• OpenAI offered the US government a piece of itself (yes, voluntarily)

• Anthropic is hunting down VPNs and Singapore shell routes to Claude

• Pentagon gave Anthropic an Ultimatum on supply-chain designation

OpenAI’s
💰 Voluntary Tax For America

The Bite:

OpenAI has proposed giving the US government a 5% equity stake in the company.

The proposal would route the stake into a "Public Wealth Fund" modeled on the Alaska Permanent Fund.

At OpenAI's most recent valuation of roughly $852 billion, a 5% stake would be worth approximately $42.6 billion.

CEO Sam Altman raised the idea with President Trump, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent.

The concept would ask other major US AI companies to make similar contributions, though it is unclear whether Anthropic, Google, or Meta would participate.

Any agreement would likely require an act of Congress.

Snacks:

• Altman has framed the fund as a way to let Americans share in AI gains without relying on the tax code

• The US government already holds a 10% stake in Intel and takes revenue shares from Nvidia and AMD on China chip sales

• SoftBank closed its second $10B tranche into OpenAI the same week at the $852B valuation

• OpenAI confidentially filed its S-1 with the SEC in June, with Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley leading

• Senator Sanders has proposed a competing 50% one-off tax on major AI firms' equity

Why it Bites:

Right now, every major AI company pays for political goodwill the old-fashioned way: lobbying, donations, vague promises about jobs.

OpenAI just proposed a receipt.

A literal equity transfer, pegged to a real valuation, routed through a fund that would theoretically pay dividends to citizens.

It sounds generous. It is also extremely well-timed.

OpenAI is heading into an IPO while simultaneously facing a 42-state attorney general investigation, a for-profit restructuring that erased its original nonprofit mission, and projected operating losses of $14 billion for 2026.

Handing the government a stake turns a regulator into a shareholder.

Regulators fine you. Shareholders root for you.

But hey, there's a bright side:

If this model actually spreads, it creates something that doesn't exist yet.
A mechanism where the public captures upside from the companies reshaping their economy, without waiting for Congress to agree on a tax rate.

For example:
Alaska's oil fund pays every resident roughly $1,600 a year from resource extraction.

Imagine a version of that, funded by the companies extracting value from your data, your attention, and increasingly your job.

But the catch is obvious. While it’s voluntary, it’s optional.

And optional means that only the companies with the most to gain from government goodwill are the most likely to participate., while the rest watches.

Altman is offering five percent because five percent buys a narrative.

Whether it buys a precedent is a different question entirely.

The fund is the handshake. The IPO is the handoff.

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Steal This Prompt
☕️ Turn Anything Into a Metallic Origami Masterpiece

What if your logo, pet, sneaker, or startup mascot looked like it belonged in a futuristic art museum?

This prompt transforms almost anything into a sleek metallic origami sculpture with razor-sharp folds, polished metal finishes, and gallery-worthy vibes.

Use it to:

• Reimagine your logo as premium metallic art

• Turn animals, characters, or products into collectible sculptures

• Create posters, wallpapers, and luxury brand visuals

Workflow:

1. Hit this link: Metallic Origami Sculpture

2. Paste into your AI model

3. Replace the subject with your logo, product, or anything you want

4. Watch it fold itself into a futuristic metal masterpiece

   Try the prompt on Snack Prompt

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Puts experienced engineering judgment on your AI-generated codebase for when the vibe-coded prototype needs to actually scale.

_{Everything Else}
🧠 You Need to Know

⚖️ Unsealed Emails Show Pentagon's Anthropic Ultimatum
→ Court documents reveal Emil Michael gave Amodei "one more chance to align" before the supply-chain designation over autonomous weapons and surveillance redlines.

🎬 Kling AI Raises $2.8B At $15B Valuation
→ Alibaba, Tencent, and Baidu backed Kuaishou's AI video unit, with a Hong Kong IPO expected within 12 months.

🔐 Anthropic Cracks Down On Chinese Claude Access
→ ByteDance reimbursed VPN subscriptions and Ant Financial routed through Singapore, prompting new detection systems targeting time zones and proxy settings.

🏛️ White House Nears Frontier Model Release Standards
→ Advanced talks with OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic could produce voluntary benchmarks and access timelines as early as the week of July 7.

💰 OpenAI Proposes 5% Government Stake
→ Altman pitched a ~$42.6B "Public Wealth Fund" equity transfer to Trump and senior officials ahead of OpenAI's planned IPO.