Trump asked Musk for SpaceX stock to seed US kids’ savings accounts, report says

But the long-term outlook is murky, as insiders suggest that Trump is exploring public-benefit initiatives to combat growing anti-AI sentiment. As one option, sources told Semafor that Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick has favored creating a sovereign wealth fund seeded by leading AI firms. Bernie Sanders has suggested that move could give Americans more control over the AI industry. Another option, sources told Semafor, is for the US to take equity stakes in AI firms, an idea Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent reportedly floated. Earlier this month, three sources told the news outlet NOTUS that senior US officials had already discussed “the potential for the federal government to acquire some shares in their firms.” Those “discussions have centered on having the firms voluntarily cede the shares to the government,” NOTUS’s sources said, with any returns on investments then distributed to public purposes. That could look like “a dividend payment to all American households,” NOTUS suggested, or it could be invested to increase the value of Trump Accounts. NOTUS’s sources did not reveal which AI firms were involved in discussions of voluntarily ceding equity stakes, but NOTUS confirmed that Anthropic was not among them. SpaceX did not immediately respond to Ars’ request to comment on Semafor’s report. According to Musk, “every government incentive his companies ever received amounted to ‘less than 2 percent’ of the value of Tesla and SpaceX,” Yahoo Finance reported. The Trump administration could also face obstacles beyond companies’ resistance to striking stock deals for public benefit. No one is sure what complications may arise from “the US trying to effectively regulate something it partially owns,” NOTUS reported, and such deals could “arguably” increase “incentives for a federal bailout.” There may also be no legal mechanism yet “for any AI firm to turn over equity to the government,” NOTUS reported. Nat Purser, a senior policy advocate for AI policy at Public Knowledge, told NOTUS that the public should be cautious in embracing policies that create “a situation where the government becomes less willing to impose, or enforce, safety rules because doing so could reduce the value of its own investment.” “The problem is that the government would be a shareholder and a regulator at the same time, which creates substantial conflicts of interest,” Purser said. Meanwhile, some parents have reported issues with using the Trump Accounts app. Several reviews in the Apple App Store complained that there is “no customer support” to help after errors blocked signups. One reviewer claimed the text message verification was broken. Others reached tech support but still became frustrated and felt they had to solve their own issues. One reviewer complained about the app crashing after “a clerical error when my IRS form was transcribed by the app, which I had to figure out without the assistance of tech support, which was polite but incompetent.” While millions have enrolled their kids, not everyone is convinced that Trump Accounts will be “accessible for every household, ensuring that even our youngest shareholders can monitor their path to prosperity,” as the US Treasury has promised. On Reddit, reactions to news of a potential Trump Accounts donation skewed negative, with hundreds of critical comments in a SpaceX thread. One commenter suggested that Trump Accounts “overwhelmingly” benefit “the wealthiest households,” by giving “free money” to kids whose parents already have the means to invest in IRAs. “Most people don’t even have excess cash to set aside for their own future, let alone their children’s,” the Redditor said.