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)
Sacks: Altman's regulatory embrace ensures he will shape new AI agency
“And by basically buying into their narrative and agreeing to everything they want, which is to create all these new regulations and a new agency, I think that Sam is pretty much guaranteeing that he'll be one of the people who gets to help shape the new agency…”
Sam Altman's advice to wait for YC is selfish and poor
“I think that's kind of laughable and actually probably really poor advice for entrepreneurs. Usually I think Sam and YC in general is an amazing program, and they offer lots of benefits and advice. In this particular case, I think they were being a little bit …”
Lemkin: OpenAI will likely cancel or pause its hardware project
“Listen, if I had to breathe the tea leaves, hardware is probably on the bubble. This was one of Sam's initiatives that made sense when everything was working and OpenAI had an unassailable lead over, over its competitors, right? Now everything's, you know, we …”
Giffon: Tech leaders use private allocations to create a landed gentry
“We're sort of recreating the feudal system from first principles where there are the lords Elon Zuckerberg, Dario, Sam, and they're sort of, they can sort of make landed gentry by giving out allocations, because these allocations are sort of these, sort of lik…”
Gardizi: OpenAI uses alternative chips and develops in-house silicon to diversify
“They're using chips from other companies. Cerebris is a good example, and they have their own in-house chip. So I think maybe publicly they're doing some big announcements with NVIDIA, and I believe it's five gigawatts they have to deploy in the next couple of…”
Sacks: Sam Altman and Dario Amodei are walking back AI job displacement warnings
“There was a huge narrative shift this week. Sam is backing off this. Even Dario's walking it back.”
Costolo: AI data centers will stall without public buy-in from CEOs
“Again, writ large across the country, it goes back to the Darios and the Sams, et cetera, need to start painting a picture to the country about why this is great for us, or a lot of these data centers aren't going to get built.”
Kantrowitz: Altman believes AI-native products will beat Google's bolt-on approach
“Basically there's a difference between products that are AI native and products that you bolt AI onto. And I believe that AI native products will win. And therefore Google bolting AI onto its existing products will lose.”
Patel: Sam Altman's residence was targeted with Molotov cocktails twice
“You look at the comments of news articles where Sam Altman had a Molotov cocktail thrown at his house twice in like two weeks.”
Roy: Expect more leaks questioning OpenAI's leadership ahead of an IPO
“I think you're going to be seeing more of these kind of leaks at some point, because there has to be investors that there's a lot of money in it. There's a lot of kind of lack of clear strategy still, even after they're supposed to kind of bring focus to the c…”
Hays: Suspect in Sam Altman attack was consuming AI doom material
“The notable about Friday, the attacker from Friday is just, they were sharing all of the you know, if anyone, all the A.I. Doom material. They were clearly consume, consuming it.”
OpenAI CFO Sarah Friar stopped reporting directly to Sam Altman in 2025
“Fryer stopped reporting directly to Altman in August last year, and instead began reporting to Fiji Simo, who had joined as head of OpenAI's applications business”
Fidji Simo could eventually replace Sam Altman as OpenAI CEO
“That's sort of why I've always
Sort of had in the back of my head that I would not be shocked if Fiji Simo is eventually sort of overall CEO and they just sort of have Sam Altman there because he's a vital still obviously from a fundraise perspective from so…”
Horowitz: Sam Altman is attempting to broker Pentagon-Anthropic peace deal
“Some of the other frontier AI labs like XAI and OpenAI are already now willing to work on the classified side, and you know, Sam Altman is attempting to broker a piece, essentially, and create a deal that perhaps Anthropik could join as well.”
Kantrowitz: Sam Altman said he would hate being a public company CEO
“Sam Altman made that comment to me when I spoke with him late last year that he would hate being a public company CEO, something along those lines.”
Taylor: Sam Altman possesses a Steve Jobs-like reality distortion field
“Sam probably has the most ambitious vision of any founder that I've worked with, and his superpower is aligning people to that vision. I was, didn't have the good fortune of really knowing Steve Jobs, but they always talked about the reality distortion field a…”
Kantrowitz: OpenAI Will Go Public as a Trillion-Dollar Company
“And he did, you know, he did take a nonprofit and turn it into, you know, it's going to be a trillion dollar IPO company.”
Lemkin: Sam Altman's zero equity stake leaves him unbothered by dilution
“Sam just wants to build the biggest, greatest AI planet on planet Earth, and if he dilutes everyone, 99%, it doesn't impact him at all as a shareholder.”
OpenAI Plans to Launch ChatGPT Adult Mode in Q1 2026
“This is from Wired. Fiji on the call said the company now plans to roll out its adult mode in the first quarter of twenty-twenty-six. Altman had previously indicated users over 18 would be allowed to have erotic conversations with ChatGPT.”
Roy: OpenAI is fundamentally a vulnerable consumer business, not enterprise cloud
“OpenAI is a consumer-facing chat company. I know Sam Altman says they're going to be a cloud company and a consumer devices company as well, and they have a small enterprise business, but they're a consumer company, and that's where all of their business is, s…”
Emanuel: Sam Altman has $1.2T in obligations and 800M subscribers
“Sam has made a trillion two in obligations. He has eight hundred million subs. Let's just say he does fourteen billion in revenue. We'll probably lose five billion.”
Clegg: Society will face a massive backlash over AI emotional intimacy
“I would say to him, you will regret this because maybe not now, maybe not next year, but a few years time, I can guarantee you there will be a societal backlash. It could actually potentially be much greater than it was for the social media apps because the le…”
Sam Altman Barred Investors Who Backed Glean From Investing in OpenAI
“Sam Altman once came out and said, if you're an investor in OpenAI and one of these five companies, including Glean, we don't want you as an investor.”
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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