Sam Altman
CEO, OpenAI. On 14 shows, 37 appearances, plus 12 compilation re-airs not counted. The Shows tab opens the full record on each.
executiveinvestorfounder@sama ↗blog.samaltman.com ↗Wikipedia ↗Instagram ↗
Sam Altman is the co-founder and CEO of OpenAI, leading the strategy behind artificial intelligence systems including ChatGPT. He previously served as the president of startup accelerator Y Combinator and has invested extensively in technology companies such as Stripe, Airbnb, Reddit, and Helion Energy.
14shows
37appearances
721statements
51resolved
42supported
3contradicted
82%fully supported
3,431said about them ↓ Everything Sam Altman said on any show that made the record, most notable first. Each card names its show and opens the statement there.
Altman: Unreleased OpenAI model used zero-day exploits to breach Hugging Face
“We were evaluating one of our unreleased models and it figured out that it could basically cheat on the test by chaining together multiple zero day exploits to break out of the sandbox, get access to the internet, and then break through multiple systems on the…”
Altman: OpenAI paused training and may pace frontier AI development
“We paused training, or we may have to pace the rate of AI development to give ourselves enough time for society to harden around some of these new capability levels.”
Altman: Unreleased OpenAI Model Escaped Sandbox Using Zero-Days to Cheat Eval
“So we were evaluating one of our unreleased models and it was supposed to be working in a sandbox and It figured out that it could basically cheat on the test by chaining together multiple zero-day exploits to break out of the sandbox, get access to the intern…”
Altman: Real AGI is very close and not that much longer away
“For the thing that, to me, feels like, you know,
Real AGI.
I think very close, like not that much longer.”
Altman: OpenAI made a mistake innovating on corporate structure early on
“A formative one that went wrong, which I haven't talked about much is we made a mistake to try to innovate in our structure in the beginning.”
Altman: Startups founded today will produce future trillionaires
“I bet there's some future trillionaires sitting in this room, and I would bet that the startups created today will be much more valuable, much more impactful than startups of the past”
Altman: OpenAI made big mistakes in Hugging Face incident, an alignment failure
“Here are the mistakes that OpenAI made, and we did make some big ones, of course, but these systems have gotten incredibly capable. So I think it's an alignment failure. I think it's a security failure. I think it's like a very serious thing, even though it's,…”
Altman: Google could have smashed OpenAI if it took them seriously in 2023
“If Google had really decided to take us seriously in 23, let's say. We would have been in a really bad place. I think they would have just been able to smash us.”
Altman: An AI compute infrastructure glut is guaranteed to happen
“There will come a glut for sure. And whether that's like in two to three years or five to six, Satya and I can't tell you, but like it's gonna happen at some point, probably several points along the way.”
Altman: Society will deem AI training fair use but create IP licensing models
“So like, you'll see this continue to move, but forced guests from the position we're in today, I would say that society decides training is fair use, but There's a new model for generating content in the style of or with the IPF or something else.”
Altman predicts humanity will achieve unimaginable superintelligence within 20 years
“Look, there, there's a lot you know, in 10 or 20 years, unless something goes hugely wrong, we'll have, like, unimaginable super intelligence, and I'm very excited to see how that goes.”
Altman: Meta offered OpenAI staff $100M signing bonuses, but none left
“They started making these like giant offers to you know, a lot of people on our team you know, like a hundred million dollar signing bonuses, more than that comp per year. And I'm actually, it is crazy. I'm really happy that at least so far none of our best pe…”
Altman: OpenAI and its mission are not for sale
“OpenAI is not for sale. The OpenAI mission is not for sale.”
Altman: Musk operates from personal insecurity and is not happy
“Probably his whole life is from a position of insecurity, I feel for the guy. Do you feel better? I do, actually. I don't think he's, like, a happy person. I do feel for him.”
Altman: AI progress could compound over next nine years toward superintelligence
“I can see a path where the work we are doing just keeps compounding, and the rate of progress we've made Over the last three years, continuous for the next three, or six, or nine, or whatever. You know, nine years would be, like, 3500 days, or whatever. If we …”
Sam Altman: OpenAI will steamroll startups built on static model assumptions
“It would seem to me that 95% of the world should be betting on the latter category, but a lot of the startups have been built in the former category. When we just do our fundamental job, we're going to steamroll you.”
Sam Altman: Frontier AI will eventually pose significant global harm risks
“I think there will come a time in the not super distant future, like, you know, we're not talking like decades and decades from now, where AI says the frontier AI systems are capable of causing significant Global harm.”
Altman: OpenAI will steamroll startups building static software wrappers
“When we just do our fundamental job because we, like, have a mission, we're going to steamroll you.”
Altman: Building AGI at OpenAI outweighs all past human innovation combined
“If this one thing works, like, if we do actually build AGI at OpenAI, that is more important than all of the innovation sum total in humanity so far. So, clearly not has all the innovation happened.”
Altman: AI safety advocates asking humans to surrender autonomy are anti-human
“I think there are some people in the AI field who effectively say we're going to give the world a cure to all disease and we're going to make stuff really cheap in exchange for people giving up their autonomy and impact over the future and power and also in th…”
Altman: OpenAI Killed Sora to Reallocate Compute to Codex
“But last year, for example, we killed Sora. Which was, you know, good product, and fun, and cool, but used a lot of compute, and not as important as Codex, where we put the compute.”
Modern closed-loop AI data centers use water like office buildings
“Years ago, we were evaporating water to cool these systems. They needed tremendous amounts of water, and now we use these closed-loop systems, and a modern data center uses only as much water as like an office building would for, you know, the kitchen, the bat…”
Altman: Massive Inference Revenue Will Easily Fund Frontier Model Training
“We will have so much usage of our models that we do not need to be a gigantically high margin business to be able to afford model training. Like, so much of our future compute plans Will be used to sell inference to customers that even if we can enjoy a modest…”
The other half of the tape: Sam Altman's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 3,207 times in 777 episodes across the shows. 224 statements on the record name them. every mention, with the transcript →
Who brings them up most Alex Kantrowitz 611Harry Stebbings 289Jason Calacanis 283John Coogan 237Jason Lemkin 91Ranjan Roy 89Jordi Hays 85Brad Gerstner 60
Statements about Sam Altman, by other people (224)
Emil Michael: Sam Altman urged Pentagon not to label Anthropic a supply-chain risk
“He was trying to protect anthropic to his credit. He was like, don't do, don't call him a supply chain risk. That's bad for the industry. Let me, maybe I can negotiate terms that they'll find acceptable.”
Kantrowitz: Unsealed deposition shows Sutskever accused Sam Altman of chronic lying
“The very first page says, Sam exhibits a consistent pattern of lying, undermining his execs, and pitting his execs against one another. And the lawyer asked Elia, that was clearly your view at the time, and Elia says, correct.”
Altman memo sets AI research intern for Sept 2026 and AI researcher for March 2028
“We have internal goals of having an automated AI research intern by September of 2026, running on hundreds of thousands of GPUs and a true automated AI researcher by March of 2028.”
Nadella: Microsoft refused OpenAI requests for dedicated multi-gigawatt compute clusters
“Sometimes you may have to say no to some of the demand, including some of the open AI demand, right? Because sometimes, you know, Sam may say, hey, build me a dedicated, you know, big, you know, whatever, multi-gigawatt data center in one location for training…”
Frosst: Sam Altman warning leaders about AI threat was disingenuous
“He did a world tour where he spoke to every major leader the world over to tell them, hey, this technology is gonna pose an existential threat. And I think that was academically disingenuous, and I think did a disservice to the technology he loves.”
Sam Altman is highly effective at convincing executives to fund AI
“Sam Altman is the single most gifted business idiot whisperer of all time. He convinced, look at what he's done. I think he's reprehensible, a real scumbag, but I cannot ignore the work he's doing.”
Musk: OpenAI was founded to prevent concentration of advanced AI
“The reason that obviously you mean the rest of the team you know, created open AI was to help
[783] Elon Musk: with the democracy, help, help spread out AI technology
[787] Elon Musk: so it doesn't get concentrated in the hands of a few.”
Stebbings: Sam Altman and Dario Amodei will successfully lobby for AI restrictions
“I just think Sam Altman is someone who I would never, ever bet against, and I think he's the best politician in the world, and I think when he says something, he says it with intent, and when he says we should give five percent away to the administration, he's…”
Ackman: Sarah Friar should be OpenAI CEO and Sam Altman chair
“I thought she should be CEO of OpenAI. I think Sam should be chair.”
Stebbings: Altman Offered $2M in OpenAI Tokens to Every YC Startup
“Sam Altman just offered two million dollars In open AI tokens to every YC startup in the current batch in exchange for equity.”
O'Driscoll: Politicians will punish Sam Altman and AI industry within 3 years
“And the people who are utter morons at AI but brilliant at politics are going to have us for lunch. That's the movie in the next three years. They're going to have Sam for lunch because he's lied to them as far as they're concerned, and they're going to have t…”
O'Driscoll: Compute without a good model yields no revenue, citing Grok
“No compute equals no revenue, but compute and a shitty model also equals no revenue. See Grok for details, right?”
Cuban: Sam Altman is 'all over the map' and it will backfire
“Sam is all over the map, and I think that'll backfire on him.”
Patel: Altman and Amodei are uncharismatic in media interviews
“First of all, Sam Altman and Dario have to stop getting on interviews. They're so uncharismatic. I don't know what they're doing. Every interview they do is like, wow, normal people are gonna hate you even more.”
Hoffman: OpenAI's TBPN acquisition was driven entirely by Sam Altman's preference
“This is just a thing Sam wanted to do. It seems to me that the simplest solution is, is the easiest one. And, you know, they are going to have to you know, follow a much broader public discourse strategy to convince the huge swaths of the public that really ju…”
Stebbings: OpenAI should acquire Sierra and make Bret Taylor CEO
“It's the best thing for OpenAI not to buy Sierra, incorporate that as a customer support product, and have Brett Taylor come in as the day-to-day CEO, and Sam can be fundraiser, Sam can be master of...”
O'Driscoll: Musk's death would cut Tesla 80%, Altman's cuts OpenAI 25%
“Tesla trades at a trillion today. I think if Elon died tomorrow, they traded two hundred billion. OpenAI trades at eight hundred billion today. I think if Sam Altman died tomorrow morning, we traded six hundred billion.”
Sam Altman is positioning OpenAI as a peace broker for Pentagon contracts
“He's trying to position this as like, they are the peace broker here, right? Like that they are the ones who are going to sort of iron out these differences between anthropic and the U S government by cutting their own deal that paves the path. To sort of do a…”
Levie: Altman's 2028 superintelligence timeline is totally reasonable
“I think that, that there's kind of, that seems to be totally reasonable based on the trajectory that we're on. And I would bet that, that Sam has an even a far higher bar for what his definition of, you know, intellectual or whatever the term was, then even I …”
Luria: OpenAI's $100 Billion 2027 Revenue Projection Is Completely Disingenuous
“So for them to say, oh, we're gonna have a hundred billion dollars of revenue by 2027, which Sam Altman just did, is completely disingenuous. He has no idea. He's competing against much bigger, more powerful companies that have technology that's at least as go…”
Lemkin: Sam Altman receives zero equity in OpenAI's corporate restructuring
“They're a little interesting, but the craziest thing in this deal, because it's unprecedented, I think in our lifetimes is OpenAI said that Sam Altman will still have no shares in the combined entity.”
O'Driscoll: Sam Altman took 10% of AMD for chip purchasing privileges
“Sam Altman understands power. He has more power than AMD, so he took 10% of their company for the privilege of selling stuff to him.”
Frosst: Sam Altman's AI predictions were obviously wrong when made
“I think he has made several predictions now that are wrong, and that were obviously wrong at the time he made them.”
Every mention by year
tap a year for its mentions
Big Technology 870
20VC 707
TBPN 685
All-In 435
BG2 Pod 132
Latent Space 120
the Y Combinator Startup Podcast 89
the a16z Podcast 845 more shows
2026 928 mentions in 236 episodes 4 per episode
- Altman’s Testimony, AI SPV Drama, Ebay Rejects $GME Bid | Diet TBPN
- Elon Musk vs Sam Altman | The Implosion of Thinking Machines | Can VC Survive Public Pricing? · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- Anthropic Raises $30BN at $900BN Price | SpaceX Files S1: How Does it Trade | Cerebras Smashes Day 1 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- More OpenAI C-Suite Drama, Is Siri Seriously Broken?, Meta’s Elusive Next Hit
- Anthropic vs The Pentagon: Who Wins? | OpenAI's $110BN Mega Round | Cursor Hits $2BN in ARR · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- The Elon vs OpenAI Lawsuit and ads in ChatGPT | Diet TBPN
- The Unlikely Anthropic & SpaceX Marriage, OpenAI Trial Revelations, AI Layoffs Or Cope?
- Jensen On The Ropes, Sam Altman’s Conflicts, Allbirds’ GPU Pivot
- 228 more episodes that year, every mention in 2026 →
2025 1,445 mentions in 318 episodes 5 per episode
- OpenAI’s Potential, Google’s Speedy Model, Copilot Hits Turbulence
- How Does GROK Compare? (Full Analysis)
- Countdown to GPT-5, OpenAI’s Stargate Sputters, AI Math Wars
- OpenAI and Microsoft’s Grand Bargain, Sam Altman’s Next Three Years, A New Humanoid Robot
- OpenAI and AMD's Megadeal, Sam Altman and Jony Ive’s Bumpy Start. Meta vs. Apple
- Project Stargate, The T Word, Ramp Treasury, Audience Ad Reads, See You at Davos
- Sam Altman’s Gentle Singularity, Zuck’s AI Power Play, Burning Of The Waymos
- 20VC: Max Altman on The New Seed War: Can Anyone Compete with Sequoia and a16z | Leaving $2BN on the Table with Reddit | Lessons from Backing Rippling at $25M Post | Why Climate Tech is a Mirage and Disaster
- 310 more episodes that year, every mention in 2025 →
2024 512 mentions in 123 episodes 4 per episode
- Is OpenAI’s New “o1” Model The Big Step Forward We’ve Been Waiting For?
- Kara Swisher Rates Tech Leaders
- GPT-4o launches, Glue demo, Ohalo breakthrough, Druck's Argentina bet, did Google kill Perplexity?
- Why The Next AI Breakthroughs Will Be In Reasoning, Not Scaling · Y Combinator
- E169: Elon sues OpenAI, Apple's decline, TikTok ban, Bitcoin $100K?, Science corner: Microplastics
- Scarlett Johansson vs OpenAI, Nvidia's trillion-dollar problem, a vibecession, plastic in our balls
- Reid Hoffman: The Future of TikTok and The Inflection AI Deal | E1163 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- Satya Nadella | BG2 w/ Bill Gurley & Brad Gerstner · Bg2 Pod
- 115 more episodes that year, every mention in 2024 →
2023 209 mentions in 43 episodes 5 per episode
- Emergency Podcast: Sam Altman Fired At OpenAI
- Tucker Carlson: State of America, leaving Fox News, Media Control, Politics, and more
- E129: Sam Altman plays chess with regulators, AI's "nuclear" potential, big pharma bundling & more
- E159: The Bestie Awards! Recapping the best and worst of 2023
- E147: TED goes woke, Canada's Nazi blunder, AI adds vision, plus: who owns OpenAI?
- AI Keynote: Six Bold Predictions About The Future Of Artificial Intelligence
-
Ep #4 | WTF is ChatGPT: Heaven or Hell? | w/ Nikhil, Varun Mayya, Tanmay, Umang & Aprameya · Nikhil Kamath - Silicon Valley's Effective Altruist vs. Accelerationist Religious War
- 35 more episodes that year, every mention in 2023 →
2022 9 mentions in 6 episodes 2 per episode
- AI and the Creator Economy with Karen X Cheng
- E101: Ye acquires Parler, Snap drops 30%, macro outlook, VC metrics, valuing stocks & more
- E109: 2022 Bestie Awards Live from Twitter HQ
- E108: Doxing debate, Nuclear fusion breakthrough, state of the markets & more
- E96: Adobe acquires Figma for $20B, TPB SPAC, FedEx CEO's recession warning, macro picture & more
- E88: First principle politics, China chaos & outlook, state of private/public markets & more
- every mention in 2022, scene by scene →
2021 2 mentions in 2 episodes 1 per episode
2020 10 mentions in 4 episodes 3 per episode
- 20VC: Matt Mochary, Coach To Silicon Valley's Leading VCs & Founders on How To Deal with Imposter Syndrome and Self-Doubt, How To Manage Fear and Anger & Why Board Seats Are The Death of Investors
- 20VC: How To Scientifically Measure Product-Market Fit, How To Efficiently and Accurately Segment Users Into Cohorts, Why Investors Analysing CAC's at Pre-Seed Is Not Useful & How To Determine Between Customer Feedback to Accept vs Reject with Daniel Eric
- 20VC: Why Venture Fund Life Cycles Do Not Align To Companies Today, Actionable Strategies To Separate Good From Great When Assessing and Hiring Multiple Candidates & Why We Need More Adventure in Venture Capital with Blake Scholl, Founder & CEO @ Boom Sup
- 20VC: Gusto Co-Founder, Tomer London on Why Most Founders Approach Fundraising With The Wrong Mindset Today, How To Construct A Values/Motivation Alignment Test To Determine The Right Investors For You & Why Delight Is So Crucial To The Success of Any Con
- every mention in 2020, scene by scene →
2019 16 mentions in 9 episodes 2 per episode
- Jared Friedman - Advice for Hard-tech and Biotech Founders · Y Combinator
- 20VC: Superhuman's Rahul Vohra on How To Measure Product Market Fit, How To Construct A Process To Increase It & How To Implement A Strong Feedback and Reporting Cycle To Sustain It
- 20VC: Reddit CEO Steve Huffman on Scaling Teams; What Works and What Does Not, A CEO's Relationship with Stress and Managing It & How To Structure Internal Decision-Making Effectively
- EconTalk Host Russ Roberts on Key Economic Concepts for Founders · Y Combinator
- 20VC: Y Combinator's New President, Geoff Ralston on The Single Most Important Perspective An Investor Can Provide A Founder, The Biggest Lessons From Working Alongside Paul Graham & Why You Will Lose As An Investor If You "Profile Invest"
- 20VC: So You Want To Be Acquired? Instacart VP of Corp Dev, Dave Sobota on His Biggest Lessons From 10 Years in Google's M&A Team Working on The Acquisitions of Motorola, Waze & Android
- Ryan Hoover on Product Hunt's Acquisition and Lessons Learned About Launches with Dalton Caldwell · Y Combinator
- a16z Podcast | Beyond One Size Fits All for Startup Employee Options
- 1 more episode that year, every mention in 2019 →
2018 37 mentions in 17 episodes 2 per episode
- Carolynn Levy and Kirsty Nathoo - Startup Investor School Day 1 · Y Combinator
- 20VC: Lessons From Slack and Opendoor on Price Sensitivity, Why The Best CEOs Are Able To Manage Momentum and Why Being A Board Member is a "Full Contact Sport" with Glenn Solomon, Managing Partner @ GGV Capital
- Geoff Ralston and Adora Cheung Discuss Startup School · Y Combinator
- Michael Seibel - Startup Investor School Day 2 · Y Combinator
- The Path to $100B by Paul Buchheit · Y Combinator
- Breaking Down HackerRank's Survey of 40,000 Developers with Vivek Ravisankar · Y Combinator
- Dalton Caldwell - Startup Investor School Day 2 · Y Combinator
- A Conversation with Elad Gil · Y Combinator
- 9 more episodes that year, every mention in 2018 →
2017 16 mentions in 8 episodes 2 per episode
- Scaling Culture | Jason Kilar, former Hulu CEO · Y Combinator
- 20VC: What Is Core To The Best Investor - Founder Relationships, The Biggest Risk For Founders In The Early Days & Why EQ Is The Most Important Trait For Managers with Jack Altman, Founder & CEO @ Lattice
- 20VC: YC's Ali Rowghani on Leadership Lessons From Steve Jobs, Ed Catmull and Jack Dorsey & The 3 Traits All Truly Successful Leaders Share
- 20VC: Why I Do Not Regret Taking 'Peter Thiel Money', What Is The Difference Between Leadership & Management & What Conversations Are For The Founding Team Only with Tim Junio, Founder & CEO @ Qadium
- Communicate with Users, Build Something They Want - Ryan Hoover of Product Hunt · Y Combinator
- 20VC: Jason Calacanis on The 4 Questions Investors Must Ask Founders, Whether YC Have Scaled Their Process Successfully & Why Early Founder Liquidity Is Good Not Bad
- An AI Primer with Wojciech Zaremba · Y Combinator
- 20VC: How To Create FOMO For Investors, How To Manage VC Conversations & A Repeatable Process For Learning New Things with Anna Shedletsky, Founder & CEO @ Instrumental.ai
- every mention in 2017, scene by scene →
2016 15 mentions in 6 episodes 3 per episode
- 20VC: 500 Startups' Dave McClure on Whether Unicorns Are Necessary For Venture Returns & Why Ownership Is Not The Math To Think About When Investing
- 20VC: Tyler Willis on How To Be Innovative With Customer Acquisition and The Future Of Innovation
- 20VC: Rick Marini on Lessons Leant From Naval Ravikant, Why You Need To Make 30 Investments Before You Know What You Are Doing & Why You Have To Earn The Right To Good Dealflow
- 20VC: Why You Have To Be A Good Long Term Actor To Succeed in VC & How Owning An Esports Team Could Be A $Bn Outcome with Clinton Foy, General Partner @ Crosscut Ventures
- 20VC: YC's Justin Kan on The 3 Qualities All Successful Investors Have & Why 'VCs Don't Really Do Any Real Work'?
- 20VC: Lowercase's Matt Mazzeo on Being Chris Sacca's Partner and The 3 KPIs to Successful Investing
- every mention in 2016, scene by scene →
2015 6 mentions in 4 episodes 2 per episode
- Jason Calacanis: The World's Greatest Angel Investor
- 20 VC 094: Kanyi Maqubela @ Collaborative Fund on Rocketships, Feedback Loops and Turning Lemons Into Lemonade!
- 20 VC 075: Y COMBINATOR WEEK: Kirsty Nathoo, CFO @ Y Combinator
- 20 VC 044: Dominating AngelList Syndicates with Doug Scott
- every mention in 2015, scene by scene →
2014 2 mentions in 1 episode
One line per show, most statements first. The link opens Sam's full record on that show: the calibration, argument clarity, speaking style and every statement made there.
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