OpenAI CEO Sam Altman thanks Elon Musk and others for helping bankroll OpenAI initially

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has a clear message for aspiring tech founders: AI’s explosive growth has made now the best time to launch a startup. In a recent interview with Y Combinator’s President and CEO Garry Tan, Altman compared today’s AI advancements to the early days of pivotal tech shifts like the rise of mobile, the internet, and the semiconductor revolution.

“With each successive major technological revolution, you’ve been able to do more than you could before,” Altman said, highlighting the vast potential for new ideas and industries built on AI’s capabilities.

Reflecting on OpenAI’s beginnings, Altman noted the importance of early financial support, especially from his own funds and Elon Musk. “It was definitely helpful that I could just, like, write the early checks for OpenAI, and I think it would have been hard to get somebody else to do that at the very beginning,” he said. While Altman credited Musk’s early financial backing, OpenAI and Musk’s relationship has since soured. Musk, who co-founded the company with Altman, has since criticized OpenAI and filed lawsuits against it, accusing the company of deceptive practices. OpenAI, in turn, recently stated that Musk’s actions were attempts to gain a competitive edge for his own AI firm, xAI.

Despite these tensions, Altman’s optimism about the AI sector is clear. He believes the pace of AI development is underestimated, even by tech giants. “Bet on this tech trend,” Altman advised. “We are not near the saturation point.”

Altman also highlighted OpenAI’s evolution, noting the company’s shift toward a for-profit model after years as a nonprofit, though he cautioned that rapid growth doesn’t always translate into sustained success. “You still have to build something of enduring value,” he said, underscoring the need for startups to focus on long-term impact.

Imagining the future, Altman said he envisions companies achieving billions in revenue with only a handful of employees, powered by vast computational resources rather than extensive teams. “It’s like one person plus 10,000 GPUs. Pretty powerful,” he remarked.

While Altman predicts transformative impacts from AI in the near term, some researchers remain sceptical about the arrival of artificial general intelligence (AGI), suggesting it might still be some distance away. Nonetheless, Altman remains enthusiastic about the opportunities AI presents, encouraging founders to seize the moment and shape the future.