Sam Altman: The Future of OpenAI, ChatGPT's Origins, and Building AI Hardware

Sam Altman at AI Startup School 2025 argues AGI is inevitable within 20 years and that this is the best moment in history to start a company.

• Elon Musk sent OpenAI a brutal email predicting zero percent chance of success shortly after GPT-1 was shown to him.
• 03’s API price dropped 5x in one week; Altman expects cost-per-performance to keep falling dramatically.
• OpenAI is about to release an open-source model Altman says will far exceed expectations for local inference.
• Memory is Altman’s favorite 2025 launch; the end state is a persistent AI companion running continuously across all devices.
• Altman sees humanoid robots bundled with top-tier ChatGPT subscriptions as a near-term reality, not a distant vision.
• AI for science is Altman’s single biggest personal bet: accelerating scientific discovery is the root cause of all long-term economic growth.
• Hiring advice: prioritize slope over y-intercept; ignore prestigious resumes, focus on what candidates have actually built and their velocity.
• ChatGPT is already the fifth-largest website globally, up from zero two and a half years ago, and Altman targets first place.

2025-06-21 · Watch on YouTube