On June 10th, at an energy-themed summit hosted by the American political news website Politico News Network, Joel Kaplan, Global Affairs Director of the American metaverse platform company Meta, stated that when working with the U.S. government, the company spent most of its time discussing policies that could be introduced by the government to facilitate the implementation of AI industry transformation and help the company gain an advantage in competition with China.
"Kaplan said: 'We think the White House is a fairly good partner in this area.'"
However, regarding President Trump's proposal for the U.S. government to establish equity partnerships with leading artificial intelligence companies, Kaplan responded that the company basically took a disregard attitude, saying, "We didn't spend much time researching it."
Joel Kaplan
Previously, on June 5th, Trump spoke to reporters on board Air Force One. His team is studying the possibility of AI companies transferring their shares to American citizens and plans to hold talks with executives of these AI companies.
He said, “This concept is very interesting; it could potentially lead to a partnership between companies and the American public. We will conduct research on this matter.”
According to a report by the information platform NOTUS on the 4th, several high-ranking US officials have preliminary discussions with artificial intelligence companies regarding the possibility of the US government acquiring some shares of related enterprises.
Trump said that the U.S. government would essentially become partners of these companies. Trump did not name any specific companies, but the leading artificial intelligence companies in the U.S include metaverse platforms, the OpenAI research center, and Anthropic.
Recently, American politicians have been considering several proposals aimed at allowing the American public to share in the substantial wealth created by the artificial intelligence industry.
American Republican Senator Bernie Sanders also proposed a plan last week, which would impose a 50% tax on the stocks of leading artificial intelligence companies. The proceeds from this tax would be used to establish a sovereign wealth fund. He said that this proposal would also give the federal government voting rights in company decision-making.
OpenAI Chief Executive Officer Sam Altman and other senior management personnel also support the establishment of a sovereign wealth fund supported by the profits of the artificial intelligence industry.
However, Clark, the global affairs director of Meta, was clearly indifferent in his statement on June 10. He said that the metaverse platform companies are currently focusing more on investing in various artificial intelligence-enabled technologies, rather than designing ways to directly distribute the benefits of the artificial intelligence industry to the public.
Kaplan said: “We believe the right approach is to continue investing money into these companies. We are all raising capital to ensure that funds are used wisely for infrastructure construction. We are also making investments in areas where data centers will be established, so that the local community can benefit from these data center projects.”
Kaplan said, "So now we focus on the way capital is invested, aiming to create a future where everyone can participate and share the benefits of development."
China and the United States are competing fiercely in the field of artificial intelligence. In February, MIT Technology Review stated that 2025 marks a turning point for artificial intelligence in China. Since DeepSeek released its R1 inference model in January of that year, Chinese companies have continuously launched AI models that are comparable to Western-leading models, but with much lower costs.
According to reports, the total number of downloads of open-source models in China has surpassed that of American models. For developers and builders around the world, accessing cutting-edge artificial intelligence technologies has never been so convenient and cost-effective.
MIT Technology Review believes that if Chinese open-source artificial intelligence models continue to improve, they will not only provide global developers with the most cost-effective cutting-edge technology solutions, but also reshape the global innovation landscape and the dominance of industry standards.
Kyle Chen, a researcher at the John Thornton China Research Center at the Brookings Institution, believes that the United States still has an advantage in leading-edge technologies. However, China is rapidly developing through improvements in efficiency, widespread adoption of open-source technology, and the integration of artificial intelligence with the real economy. In the long run, the success of the artificial intelligence sector depends not only on whether the most powerful models can be created, but also on who can efficiently convert AI technology into practical economic and social benefits.
