diff --git a/stdlib/_typeshed/__init__.pyi b/stdlib/_typeshed/__init__.pyi
index 103af47c7524..0f975e44e04e 100644
--- a/stdlib/_typeshed/__init__.pyi
+++ b/stdlib/_typeshed/__init__.pyi
@@ -10,6 +10,31 @@ from os import PathLike
 from typing import AbstractSet, Any, Container, Generic, Iterable, Protocol, TypeVar, Union
 from typing_extensions import Final, Literal, final
 
+_WU = TypeVar("_WU")
+
+class WeakUnion(Any, Generic[_WU]):
+    """
+    Some functions can return different types depending on passed arguments. e.g.
+
+    * `builtins.open(name, 'rb')` returns `io.BufferedReader`, whereas
+    * `builtins.open(name, 'wb')` returns `io.BufferedWriter`.
+
+    Typeshed attempts to model such scenarios accurately via `@typing.overload`,
+    however with with such overloaded functions there is always the case
+    that the return type cannot be determined statically, e.g:
+
+        def my_open(name: str, mode: str):
+            return open(name, mode)
+
+    In such cases typeshed currently returns Any. While a Union return would be
+    more accurate that would require all existing code that depends on the Any
+    (and asserts the type safety in some other way) to be updated. WeakUnion lets
+    typeshed annotate the semantic return type of such overloads in a backwards
+    compatible manner. Type checkers that do not know about this typeshed-specific
+    type will just treat it as Any, whereas tooling that knows about it can use
+    the additional information to provide more type safety or better autocompletion.
+    """
+
 _KT = TypeVar("_KT")
 _KT_co = TypeVar("_KT_co", covariant=True)
 _KT_contra = TypeVar("_KT_contra", contravariant=True)
diff --git a/stdlib/builtins.pyi b/stdlib/builtins.pyi
index 87623557d7bc..ad8b82703f54 100644
--- a/stdlib/builtins.pyi
+++ b/stdlib/builtins.pyi
@@ -21,12 +21,12 @@ from _typeshed import (
     SupportsRichComparisonT,
     SupportsTrunc,
     SupportsWrite,
+    WeakUnion,
 )
 from collections.abc import Callable
 from io import BufferedRandom, BufferedReader, BufferedWriter, FileIO, TextIOWrapper
 from types import CodeType, TracebackType, _Cell
 from typing import (
-    IO,
     AbstractSet,
     Any,
     BinaryIO,
@@ -49,6 +49,7 @@ from typing import (
     SupportsFloat,
     SupportsInt,
     SupportsRound,
+    TextIO,
     TypeVar,
     Union,
     overload,
@@ -1327,7 +1328,7 @@ def open(
     newline: str | None = ...,
     closefd: bool = ...,
     opener: _Opener | None = ...,
-) -> IO[Any]: ...
+) -> WeakUnion[TextIO | BinaryIO]: ...
 def ord(__c: str | bytes) -> int: ...
 
 class _SupportsWriteAndFlush(SupportsWrite[_T_contra], Protocol[_T_contra]):
diff --git a/stdlib/subprocess.pyi b/stdlib/subprocess.pyi
index f95583129cdd..913302aeb457 100644
--- a/stdlib/subprocess.pyi
+++ b/stdlib/subprocess.pyi
@@ -1,5 +1,5 @@
 import sys
-from _typeshed import Self, StrOrBytesPath
+from _typeshed import Self, StrOrBytesPath, WeakUnion
 from types import TracebackType
 from typing import IO, Any, AnyStr, Callable, Generic, Iterable, Mapping, Sequence, TypeVar, Union, overload
 from typing_extensions import Literal
@@ -633,7 +633,7 @@ if sys.version_info >= (3, 7):
         encoding: str | None = ...,
         errors: str | None = ...,
         text: bool | None = ...,
-    ) -> Any: ...  # morally: -> _TXT
+    ) -> WeakUnion[str | bytes]: ...
 
 else:
     @overload
@@ -755,7 +755,7 @@ else:
         input: _TXT | None = ...,
         encoding: str | None = ...,
         errors: str | None = ...,
-    ) -> Any: ...  # morally: -> _TXT
+    ) -> WeakUnion[str | bytes]: ...
 
 PIPE: int
 STDOUT: int