I first met Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, nearly 20 years ago when we were both part of a local mobile app startup called Looped. We were both backed by Sequoia Capital and were in the first class of Sequoia Scouts. Sam invested in a little-known fintech company called Stripe, while I invested in Uber.
Sam later went on to co-found OpenAI in 2016 with the goal of ensuring that artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity. In 2019, he left his role as president of Y Combinator to join OpenAI full-time as CEO.
Things got really interesting on November 30, 2022, when OpenAI launched ChatGPT. In January 2023, Microsoft invested $10 billion in the company. In November 2023, Sam was reportedly looking to raise $7 trillion for an AI chip project, and it was also reported that he was looking to raise $1 billion from Masayoshi Son to create an iPhone killer with Johnny Ive, the co-creator of the iPhone.
ChatGPT has become a household name and is having a massive impact on how we work and how work is getting done. It is reportedly the fastest product to hit 100 million users in history, in just two months. OpenAI's revenue ramp-up has been insane, with the company reportedly hitting $2 billion in ARR last year.
I had the opportunity to interview Sam on the All-In podcast, and he had some interesting things to say about the future of OpenAI and AI in general.
When asked about the release of GPT-5, Sam said that they take their time on releases of major new models and that they may release it in a different way than they've released previous models. He also mentioned that they may release it to paid users first or do a slower rollout to get the red teams tight since now there's so much at stake.
Sam also talked about the business decision to keep these models closed source and where he sees things going in the next couple of years. He said that they want to make more advanced technology available to free users, and that they build AI tools and make them super widely available free or not that expensive, so that people can use them to go and invent the future.
Sam also talked about the importance of open source models and the role they will play in the future. He said that he is particularly interested in open source models that are as good as they can be and that run on his phone.
When asked about the arms race for data, Sam said that he doesn't think it will be an arms race for data because when the models get smart enough, it shouldn't be about more data. He expects lots of very capable models in the world and that there will be all these different ways to design the systems.
Sam also talked about the importance of making AI technology available to free users and how they are trying to figure out how to make more advanced technology available to free users. He said that they want to build towards AGI and to figure out how to broadly distribute its benefits.
Overall, it was an interesting conversation with Sam and it's clear that OpenAI is doing some exciting things in the world of AI. I'm looking forward to seeing what the future holds for the company and the technology.