I am excited to welcome Sam Altman, co-founder and CEO of OpenAI, to the Entrepreneurial Thought Leader Seminar at Stanford University. Sam is known for breaking boundaries and transcending what's possible, and his life is a testament to this. Growing up in the midwest, Sam came to Stanford and took ETL as an undergrad. After his sophomore year, he joined the inaugural class of Y Combinator with a Social Mobile app company called Looped, which went on to raise money from Sequoia and others. He then dropped out of Stanford and spent seven years on Looped, which was eventually acquired.
Sam then rejoined Y Combinator in an operational role and became the president of Y Combinator from 2014 to 2019. In 2015, he co-founded OpenAI as a nonprofit research lab with the mission to build general-purpose artificial intelligence that benefits all of humanity. OpenAI has set the record for the fastest-growing app in history with the launch of ChatGPT, which grew to 100 million active users just two months after launch. Sam was named one of Time's 100 most influential people in the world and was also named Time CEO of the year in 2023. He was most recently added to Forbes' list of the world's billionaires.
Sam lives with his husband in San Francisco and splits his time between San Francisco and Napa. He is also a vegetarian.
As we welcome Sam to the stage, I am reminded that this is his birthday week and that we are lucky to have him here at Stanford and ETL. I am curious if he reflects back on when he was half a life younger, when he was 19 in ETL, and if there were three words to describe what his felt sense was like as a Stanford undergrad. Sam responds that he was excited, optimistic, and curious. I ask him if those are still his three words now, and he says yes.
I then ask Sam what advice he would give to a Stanford undergrad today if he had a Freaky Friday moment and woke up as a 19-year-old Stanford student. Sam says that he would feel incredibly lucky to be coming of age at this time, as he believes it is the best time to start a company or do AI research. He notes that the world is going to change and that there is a great opportunity to impact that change.
When asked if he has a bias on where he would contribute, Sam says that he would go work on research and that he would be agnostic about whether that is in academia or private industry. He notes that to do meaningful AI research, one needs a lot of compute, and that industry is probably the best place to find that.
If Sam were to join an existing company, he would look for a place where he could do meaningful AI research and would not be concerned about whether that is in academia or private industry.
I then ask Sam about his advice for students who are wrestling with whether to start a company now or to join another entrepreneurial venture or research lab. Sam says that he thinks one learns a lot by starting a company and that there is no pre-startup, as Paul Graham says. He encourages students to jump in and do it if they are sure they want to start a company.
I ask Sam what he thinks are the biggest near-term challenges that are the ripest for a startup in AI. Sam declines to answer this question, stating that he thinks it is important for people to chart their own course and come up with their own ideas. He encourages people to learn to trust themselves and come up with their own non-consensus ideas.
I ask Sam what questions he is wrestling with that no one else is talking about, and he says that he is thinking about how to build really big computers and how to put PhD-level intelligence into a product. He notes that this is something that OpenAI is still figuring out and that it is an important challenge to solve.
Sam is reportedly embarking on a semiconductor Foundry Endeavor, and I ask him to share his vision for this endeavor. Sam says that he believes AI infrastructure is going to be one of the most important inputs to the future and that he wants to make a lot more of that available. He notes that this includes chips, chip design, new kinds of networks, and data centers.
I ask Sam about the cost of building really big computers and whether he thinks the cost will keep growing with each subsequent model. Sam says that he is not concerned about the cost and that he is willing to bet on the ingenuity of people to figure out how to use these tools to build the future.
I ask Sam about the economic model of OpenAI and how he plans to monetize the company. Sam says that he is not concerned about the cost of building really big computers and that he is willing to bet on the ingenuity of people to figure out how to use these tools to build the future.
I ask Sam about his vision for 2030 and what he thinks the world will look like if OpenAI has "crushed it" by then. Sam says that he thinks the world will not be that different in some ways and that there will be a new set of students who are talking about how startups are really important and technology is really cool. He notes that there will be a new great tool in the world and that it will feel amazing if OpenAI has created way more value for society than the cost of building really big computers.
Sam, thank you so much for joining us today. We are excited to hear more about your work and to learn from your experiences.