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: Frontier Labs May Need to Pace AI Development for Society
“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 and trying to figure out how we do that in a way that does not feel like regulatory capture for anyone, and also does …”
Altman: AI will create tons of jobs and keep people busier than wanted
“I'm actually not a jobs doomer at all. I think there were going to be tons of jobs. I think we'll be busier than we want, not the opposite of that, because I think people will have such creative wishes and such incredible ideas of what they ask AI to help buil…”
Altman: Much of AI safety talk stems from desires to concentrate power
“I think a lot of the talk about safety concerns is well-founded, and then a lot of it is about people that just really, even if it's slightly subconscious, want to concentrate power.”
Altman: Robotics will have its 'ChatGPT moment' in two to three years
“It's not 20 years. I would say we get the ChatGPT moment for robotics in the next, like, two or three years.”
Altman: AI giants like LeCun told journalists OpenAI wouldn't work
“When we first announced OpenAI, all of these, like, you know, giants of the field, these experts were saying, this is like insane. It's hypey. It's irresponsible. Really respected people like Yann LeCun or whatever, telling journalists like, oh, these guys are…”
Altman: Intelligence itself will become a fungible commodity
“Intelligence itself, I would say yes.”
Altman: Overreacting to AI safety risks creating a zero-agency surveillance dystopia
“One dystopia that I'm particularly nervous about 10 years from now is we overreact to AI safety, and so we say, look, everyone, you're gonna get a cure for cancer, you're gonna have material abundance, but you will have no freedom, you will have no agency, it …”
Altman: OpenAI will never put ads into the LLM output stream
“Our first principle with ads is that we're not gonna put stuff into the LLM stream.”
Altman calls Anthropic's Super Bowl ad deceptive
“The main thing that's wrong with the ads is, like, using a deceptive ad to criticize deceptive ads feels, I don't know, something doesn't sit right with me about that.”
Sam Altman predicts US government becomes insurer of last resort for AI
“At some level, when something gets sufficiently huge, whether or not they are on paper, the federal government is kind of the insurer of last resort. As we've seen in various financial crises and insurance companies screwing things up. So, I guess, given the m…”
Altman: OpenAI will become a major AI cloud and consumer device business
“And that not only will Chachapiti keep growing, but we will be able to become one of the important AI clouds that our consumer device business will be a significant and important thing that AI that can automate science will create huge value.”
Altman: OpenAI will eventually build low-power devices running GPT-6 locally
“Someday we will make an incredible consumer device that can run a GPT-Five or GPT-Six capable model completely locally at a low power draw.”
Altman predicts AI will make a novel scientific discovery by 2026
“I hope for very small scientific discoveries in 20, 26, but if we can get those very small ones, we'll get bigger ones in future years. That's a really crazy thing to say is that like AI is going to make a novel scientific discovery in 20, 26, even a very smal…”
Altman: Video AI models capable of deepfaking anyone will arrive soon
“So like, very soon, the world is going to have to contend with incredible video models that can deepfake anyone or kind of show anything you want, and that will mostly be great.”
Altman: AI models will make important scientific discoveries in two years
“So in two years, I think the models will be doing bigger chunks of science and making important discoveries.”
Altman: Current LLMs can advance enough to automate AI research breakthroughs
“I think far enough that we can make something that will figure out the next breakthrough with the current technology. Like I, it's a very self-referential answer, but if LLMs can get, if LLM based stuff can get far enough that it can do like better research th…”
Altman: AGI arrival will not transform the world as radically as expected
“AGI will come, it will go Wuxian Bai. The world will not change as much as the impossible amount that you would think it should.”
Altman: AI regulation should strictly apply to superhuman frontier models
“The one thing I would like is as the models get, the thing I would most like is as the models get truly, like, extremely superhuman capable. I think those models and only those models are probably worth some sort of like very careful safety testing as the fron…”
Elon Musk emailed OpenAI saying it had zero percent success chance
“I can say this one because it got publicized in early, not early, a few years into OpenAI, where Elon sent us this really mean email. We'd been working through that for a while and said we had a zero percent chance of success. Like, not 0.10, that we were tota…”
Altman claims core scientific discovery in AI is mostly finished
“Figure out the remaining scientific stuff, which I don't think there's much left.”
Altman: Musk uses lawsuits and takeover bids to slow OpenAI down
“I think he's probably just trying to slow us down. He obviously is a competitor. It's, you know, he's working hard, and he's raised a lot of money for XAI, and they're trying to compete with us from a technological perspective, from you know, getting the produ…”
Altman: Climate fixes, space colonies, and physics discoveries are not far off
“But I do think all of those things, and probably a lot more we can't even imagine, are maybe not that far away.”
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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