AI Companies Are Hiring More

**Nathaniel Whittemore** (0:01)
Today on the AI Daily Brief, the latest numbers on AI and jobs.
Before that, in the headlines, is OpenAI about to give 5% of the company to the US government? The AI Daily Brief is a daily podcast and video about the most important news and discussions in AI.
All right, friends, quick announcements before we dive in. First of all, thank you to today's sponsors, KPMG, Rackspace, Blitzy, and HyperAgent. If you want to get an ad-free version of the show, go to patreon.com/aidailybrief, or you can subscribe in Apple Podcasts. And to learn more about sponsoring the show, head on over to aidailybrief.ai/sponsors, or shoot a note at sponsors at aidailybrief.ai.
Well, all those conversations about AI companies getting more tied up with the government are getting a lot more real. OpenAI has proposed handing over a 5% stake in the company to the US government. Now obviously there has been chatter about this for some time now. And honestly, if you go way, way back in Sam Altman interviews from three or four years ago, it was clear at the very beginning of the project that he thought this sort of pursuit of AI was something that inherently should have government involvement from the very beginning. I can't find the exact interview, but I remember thinking that he almost seemed surprised that the US government wasn't interested in getting involved back then. Now coming back to the deal now, this potential 5% stake would be contributed to a sovereign health fund, structured in a similar way to the Alaskan Permanent Fund, which collects oil and mining revenue for the benefit of citizens. At current valuations, the stake would be worth around $42 billion, and it's unclear whether the administration would be purchasing the stake or whether it would be a gift to the American people. The other wrinkle is that OpenAI has proposed that all leading AI developers should contribute 5% of their equity. Beyond Anthropic, this might include Google, Meta, and others, and it's not clear that any of these other firms would agree with OpenAI's proposal or if they're participating in discussions. The FT pointed to what many people assume is a pretty clear quid pro quo, writing, giving the government and ownership state could help secure good relations with the administration and would mark an attempt to address political blowback by sharing the wealth generated by AI with the public.
Now, in terms of handicapping where these conversations are, sources said the discussions were still in the early stages, referring to them as, quote, conceptual. They also added that such a deal might require an act of Congress to implement regarding this strange new era of tributary capitalism. Also on Wednesday, memory producer Micron agreed to invest 250 million in Trump accounts. The government funded investment accounts for children that were introduced last year. On Truth Social, Trump declared Micron a, quote, truly great American company, one of the hottest anywhere in the world, adding that this is, quote, the biggest corporate investment of its kind and will help jumpstart the American dream for these fabulous children as we celebrate America's 250th anniversary. Trump accounts so far have been largely funded by individual philanthropy, including a $6.25 billion donation from Dell CEO Michael Dell and his wife Susan, although other companies have made smaller contributions to the program. Look, it's pretty clear at this point that the Overton window on these sort of deals is shifting, and I'm sure we'll have more context to talk about it in the future. So before I say something that makes a big chunk of you angry, let's move on to the next story. Meta is reportedly going down an Elon Ask path, planning to launch a cloud services business as a way to monetize their excess AI capacity. According to sources speaking with Bloomberg, Meta is developing plans to launch a cloud business that will sell access to their AI infrastructure. One potential plan is selling access to models hosted on Meta's data centers, similar to the AWS Bedrock platform. Another approach would be to sell access to raw compute along the same lines as Neo clouds like CoreWeave. Sources said the plans are still in development and subject to change, but they're far enough along to have a name and a leadership team in place. The business line will be called MetaCompute and is led by Head of Infrastructure, Santosh Janardhan, working alongside Daniel Gross of MetaSuperIntelligence Labs and President Dina Powell McCormick.
Now, careful listeners will know that this is not the first we've heard of this plan. Back in May, Mark Zuckerberg told investors that the idea was definitely on the table and that they'd been fielding requests from other companies. At the time, Zuckerberg said no deals had been struck as Meta had strong internal demand for all that compute. However, he mentioned that external sales would be a natural outlet if Meta overbuilt capacity.