Sam Altman
50 statements across 24 episodes · 19 bullish · 10 bearish · 11 people on the record · first statement Feb 17, 2023 by Jason Calacanis · said 435 times in 98 episodes since 2021 · across every show →
On the record as a speaker too: Sam Altman's record, appearances and statements → this page counts the times other people say the name.
Mentions by year
brought up most by Jason Calacanis (276), David Sacks (54), David Friedberg (47), Chamath Palihapitiya (19), Andrew Feldman (6), Sarah Friar (3), Reid Hoffman (3), Naval Ravikant (3)
tap a year for its mentions
2026 101 mentions in 31 episodes 3 per episode
- Anthropic's Fable Backlash, Nationalizing AI, Inflation Heats Up & California’s Broken Elections
- Dario Defends Himself, Datacenter Panic, AI Doomer Trap, Senate Toss-Up
- AI Sovereignty Wars, Palantir-Nvidia Deal, SCOTUS Birthright Ruling, Newsom’s CA Budget Lie
- War with Iran + Pentagon vs Anthropic with Under Secretary of War Emil Michael
- OpenAI Misses Targets, Codex vs Claude, Elon vs Sam Trial, Big Hyperscaler Beats, Peptide Craze
- Nvidia's Historic Quarter, SaaS Comeback, Bessent vs Druck, America's Debt Crisis, Cancer Vaccine
- Open Source Wins, AGI Is Here, and Scorsese’s AI Toolkit with CEOs of Cerebras & Black Forest Labs
- Can the AI Industry Regulate Itself? Stripe Wants PayPal, China Catches Up, NY Bans Datacenters
- 23 more episodes that year, every mention in 2026 →
2025 122 mentions in 24 episodes 5 per episode
- OpenAI's Code Red, Sacks vs New York Times, New Poverty Line?
- JD Vance's AI Speech, Techno-Optimists vs Doomers, Tariffs, AI Court Cases with Naval Ravikant
- Bond crisis looming? GOP abandons DOGE, Google disrupts Search with AI, OpenAI buys Jony Ive's IO
- DeepSeek Panic, US vs China, OpenAI $40B?, and Doge Delivers with Travis Kalanick and David Sacks
- Trump Brokers Gaza Peace Deal, National Guard in Chicago, OpenAI/AMD, AI Roundtripping, Gold Rally
- Biggest LBO Ever, SPAC 2.0, Open Source AI Models, State AI Regulation Frenzy
- AI Bubble Pops, Zuck Freezes Hiring, Newsom’s 2028 Surge, Russia/Ukraine Endgame
- OpenAI's GPT-5 Flop, AI's Unlimited Market, China's Big Advantage, Rise in Socialism, Housing Crisis
- 16 more episodes that year, every mention in 2025 →
2024 93 mentions in 19 episodes 5 per episode
- GPT-4o launches, Glue demo, Ohalo breakthrough, Druck's Argentina bet, did Google kill Perplexity?
- 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
- Presidential Debate Reaction, Biden Hot Swap?, Tech unemployment, OpenAI considers for-profit & more
- The All-In Holiday Spectacular
- Mark Cuban: Love/Hate Relationship with Trump, Why He's Backing Kamala Harris
- Peter Thiel: The Coming Collapse No One Is Prepared For
- In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
- 11 more episodes that year, every mention in 2024 →
2023 112 mentions in 18 episodes 6 per episode
- 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?
- E110: 2023 Bestie Predictions!
- E122: Is AI the next great computing platform? ChatGPT vs. Google, containing AGI & RESTRICT Act
- E116: Toxic out-of-control trains, regulators, and AI
- All-In Summit: Bill Gurley presents 2,851 Miles
- 10 more episodes that year, every mention in 2023 →
2022 6 mentions in 5 episodes 1 per episode
- 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 →
Everything said about Sam Altman, oldest first
Feb 17, 2023 positive
Mar 17, 2023
Friedberg: Ranga Dias falsely claimed raising $20M from Sam Altman and Daniel Ek
“And he actually had a talk that he did that was published on YouTube, a year later, where he said he raised twenty million dollars from Sam Altman and Daniel Ek and a bunch of other investors. And it turns out that also wasn't true.”
Apr 21, 2023
May 19, 2023 positive
Chamath: The most knowledgeable AI figures favor regulation over free-market approaches
“And I just think that on a spectrum, it's, this is a unique moment where the most knowledgeable people across every single political spectrum, persuasion, for-profit, nonprofit, Democrat, Republican, right? Elon and Sam, I'll just use those as the two canonica…”
May 19, 2023 negative
May 19, 2023 negative
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…”
Sep 16, 2023 negative
Sacks: Sam Altman's proposed AI regulation threatens Silicon Valley
“I think that what was discussed at that hearing that Sam Altman testified at, I think it's an existential threat to Silicon Valley, because You know, what Sam proposed was, well, we're gonna, we should have a new regulatory agency, kind of like the Atomic Ener…”
Sep 22, 2023
Sep 22, 2023
Dec 1, 2023 negative
Sacks: OpenAI board was totally incompetent for firing Altman without explanation
“The board was totally incompetent. I mean, listen, if a board is going to take a drastic action of firing the founder CEO when everything is going great. I mean, cause everything's been going great at open AI. It's incumbent on them to explain their actions an…”
Dec 1, 2023 neutral
Dec 29, 2023 positive
Mar 8, 2024
Calacanis: Sam Altman was sole owner of OpenAI Venture Fund
“He started a venture fund to invest in companies called the OpenAI Ventures Fund, and he was the sole owner of it, which they're saying now it's a clerical mistake or something, but he's invested in a bunch of startups that have unique access to the OpenAI, yo…”
May 10, 2024 bullish
Altman: Advanced AI will eventually become instantaneous and too cheap to meter
“I don't know, like, when we get to intelligence too cheap to meter and so fast that it feels instantaneous to us and everything else, but I do believe we can get there for, you know, a pretty high level of intelligence, and I, it's important to us, it's clearl…”
May 10, 2024 neutral
May 10, 2024 bullish
Altman: AI development will shift toward continuous updates over major discrete releases
“I think I think that's like a better hint of what the world looks like, where it's not the like one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, but you just, you use an AI system, and the whole system just gets better and better fairly continuously. I think that's li…”
May 10, 2024 neutral
Altman: Non-profit board rules led to initial decision against OpenAI equity
“The decision back then, the re, the original reason was just like the structure of our nonprofit. It was like there was something about Yeah, ok, this is like, nice from a motivations perspective, but mostly it was that our board needed to be a majority of dis…”
May 10, 2024 negative
Altman doubts standalone AI hardware devices can succeed against smartphones
“So if you could like make a way cheaper device, I think the barrier to carry a second thing or use a second thing is pretty high. So I don't think, given that we're all willing to pay for phones, or most of us are, I don't think cheaper is the answer.”
May 10, 2024 positive
May 10, 2024 positive
May 10, 2024 neutral
Altman: AI assistants will evolve as separate entities, not personal alter egos
“I personally like the separate entity approach better and think that's where we're going to head. And so in that sense, the thing is not you, but it's like a always available, always great, super capable assistant executive.”
May 10, 2024 neutral
May 10, 2024
May 10, 2024
May 10, 2024 positive
Altman: Future social safety nets may provide universal basic compute over income
“I wonder if the future looks something like more like universal basic compute than universal basic income. And everybody gets like a slice of GPT sevens compute and they can use it. They can resell it. They can donate it to somebody to use for cancer research.…”
May 10, 2024
May 10, 2024
May 10, 2024 positive
May 10, 2024 negative
May 10, 2024 bullish
May 10, 2024 bullish
May 10, 2024 neutral
May 10, 2024 positive
May 10, 2024 positive
Altman: I never doubted OpenAI board's integrity despite my firing
“Not all of those board members are my favorite people in the world, but I have serious respect for the gravity with which they treat AGI and the importance of getting AI safety right, and even if I stringently disagree with their decision making and actions, w…”
Aug 30, 2024
Aug 30, 2024 negative
Elon Musk's lawsuits against OpenAI are driven by sour grapes
“Frankly, I think probably the most charitable thing to say is sour grapes because, you know, for example, I know Sam offered him as much of the investment round as he wanted. Right? Like, he could have done the whole thing. He could have let it. You know, it w…”
Sep 27, 2024
Sep 27, 2024 neutral
Jun 21, 2025 negative
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…”
Jul 11, 2025 negative
Calacanis: Sam Altman corrupted OpenAI's mission and betrayed Elon Musk
“Individuals, which by the way, was what he backed before Sam Altman corrupted the original missionary basis of opening. I made a closed AI in a, you know, this is nothing derogatory towards him, but he did hoodwink and stab Elon in the back.”
Aug 1, 2025 negative
Altman: OpenAI could be legally forced to disclose ChatGPT user logs
“We haven't figured that out yet for when you talk to ChatGPT. So if you go talk to ChatGPT about your most sensitive stuff, and then there's, like, a lawsuit or whatever, like, we could be required to produce that, and I think that's very screwed up.”
Oct 9, 2025 positive
Jan 23, 2026 positive
Mar 6, 2026 positive
Mar 13, 2026 bullish
Altman: AI intelligence will be sold like a metered utility
“Fundamentally, our business, and I think the business of every other model provider, is gonna look like selling tokens, but we see a future where intelligence is a utility, like electricity or water, and people buy it from us. On a meter and use it for whateve…”
May 1, 2026 neutral
May 29, 2026 neutral
Jun 2, 2026 positive
OpenAI breaks ground on a 1-gigawatt data center in Michigan
“Sam right now is in Saline, Michigan. He's gonna be cutting the ribbon in about two hours, so you are getting a sneak preview, but they told me it was okay to say it in the room. That will be, you know, sticking shovels in the ground on a one gigawatt data cen…”
Jun 3, 2026 neutral