Sam Altman has claimed over the years that the development of AI may resolve local weather change, treatment most cancers, create a benevolent superintelligence past human comprehension, present a tutor for each scholar, take over almost half of the duties in the financial system and create what he calls “common excessive wealth”.
So as to result in his utopian future, Altman is demanding monumental sources from the current. As CEO of OpenAI, the world’s most dear privately owned firm, he has in latest months introduced plans for $1tn of funding into datacenters and struck multibillion-dollar offers with a number of chipmakers. If accomplished, the datacenters are anticipated to use extra energy than entire European nations. OpenAI is pushing an aggressive growth – encroaching on industries like e-commerce, healthcare and leisure – whereas more and more integrating its merchandise into authorities, universities, and the US navy and making a play to flip ChatGPT into the new default homepage for tens of millions.
Altman’s lengthy bid to make himself the energy dealer of a brand new, AI-powered society has began to look nearer to actuality as a big portion of the US financial system now rides on the success of his imaginative and prescient. There are experiences the firm is making ready to go public in the direction of the finish of 2026 with up to a $1tn valuation in considered one of the largest preliminary public choices in historical past.
OpenAI and Altman’s burgeoning empire is not going unchallenged. Google’s rival Gemini AI chatbot is advancing quick sufficient that Altman final month issued a company-wide “code red” to refocus on ChatGPT. Many analysts have turn into involved that OpenAI could also be changing into too massive to fail because it expands its infrastructure and computing spending, whereas circular funding deals with companions have not assuaged these fears. Then there is the incontrovertible fact that OpenAI is burning through tens of billions of dollars, with even its personal optimistic forecasts exhibiting the startup is years from changing into worthwhile.
In an effort to keep investor confidence on this profit-free spending spree and keep away from regulatory crackdowns, Altman has intensified a attraction offensive over the previous yr, deepened his political connections and promised much more from OpenAI – with the firm claiming that AI will quickly be a utility “on par with electrical energy, clear water, or meals”. The CEO has additionally expanded his private portfolio, backing new vitality and neuroscience applied sciences simply as different tech moguls have. This yr will check: can he keep the relentless balancing act?
Altman and OpenAI get political
As OpenAI sought to shift its essential enterprise to a for-profit company in 2025 and confronted down makes an attempt from states throughout the US to cross AI regulation, it enormously expanded its efforts to affect lawmakers. The corporate spent $2.99m on lobbying efforts in 2025, in accordance to Lobbying Disclosure Act filings, with its spending ramping up in the latter half of the yr. That quantity is up from $1.76m in lobbying the earlier yr and simply $260,000 in 2023. The push for pleasant insurance policies continues after Trump handed the trade a victory with an government order that preempts and precludes any state-level regulation of AI. Different AI corporations have adopted swimsuit, with Anthropic spending a little bit over $3.1m throughout that very same interval.
OpenAI additionally employed consultants and lobbyists from throughout the political spectrum, together with those that have labored for California governor Gavin Newsom and former New York Metropolis mayor Invoice de Blasio. They’ve additionally introduced on the former deputy chief of workers for Republican senator Lindsey Graham and a former staffer from the Senate overseas relations committee.
The corporate’s handiest campaigner does not hail from Ok Avenue, nevertheless. It has been Altman himself, who has joined different tech moguls in ingratiating themselves with Donald Trump and allying themselves with the present administration. He has dined with Trump at Mar-a-Lago and appeared at the White Home for an occasion touting the administration’s ties with the tech trade. In September, Altman was considered one of a number of tech CEOs who joined Trump and King Charles for a state dinner in the UK.
‘If we get it unsuitable, that’s on us’
As buyers increasingly warn the AI industry is a bubble, with extreme funding in tech infrastructure for unclear payoff, Altman has conceded that some elements of the trade “are form of bubbly proper now”. But he has continued to emphasize that OpenAI stays on regular floor and that its $1.4tn dedication to construct out datacenters and computational energy is obligatory.
His message is a part of a longstanding emphasis on scaling computational energy and pursuing progress that has been a fixture of OpenAI since its early breakthroughs in the mid-2010s. It is additionally in line with a sentiment that Altman has expressed for years – that technological progress is inevitable regardless of the harms that it could create.
“We should always perceive that as a consequence of know-how and an financial system of concepts, the hole between the wealthy and the poor will probably improve from its already high-seeming ranges,” Altman wrote in 2013, in a weblog submit that thanked his good friend Peter Thiel for ideological enter. “There is good and dangerous to this, however we ought to be cautious not to legislate in opposition to it, which can harm progress.”
Greater than a decade later, Altman’s views on how technological change could have an effect on society appear constant.
“There might be very arduous elements like entire courses of jobs going away,” Altman wrote in a July weblog submit. “However on the different hand the world might be getting a lot richer so rapidly that we’ll give you the option to significantly entertain new coverage concepts we by no means may before.”
In a lengthy post on X in November, Altman defended OpenAI in opposition to accusations it was changing into “too massive to fail” or searching for authorities backstops for its investments. Altman went on the defensive after the firm’s CFO Sarah Friar spooked analysts with a suggestion that OpenAI could seek government aid, which she then unexpectedly reversed amid widespread pushback. Altman predicted that OpenAI would generate lots of of billions in income by 2030, probably branching into client units and robotics amid “large demand” for AI. He additionally downplayed the fallout if the firm have been to fail, which analysts concern would have a devastating effect on the financial system.
“That’s how capitalism works, and the ecosystem and financial system can be advantageous,” Altman posted. “We plan to be a wildly profitable firm, but when we get it unsuitable, that’s on us.”
Turning towards Trump
Altman’s appearances and obvious friendliness are a stark turnaround from his earlier view of Trump, which he expressed in a mid-2016 weblog submit that likened Trump’s rise to Hitler’s.
“To anybody acquainted with the historical past of Germany in the Thirties, it’s chilling to watch Trump in motion,” Altman wrote in 2016 prior to Trump’s election win. “He is not merely irresponsible. He is irresponsible in the approach dictators are.”
However as Trump’s second time period started, Altman posted a message lauding the president and recanting his earlier opposition.
“Watching @potus extra rigorously not too long ago has actually modified my perspective on him (i want i had performed extra of my very own pondering and positively fell in the npc lure),” Altman posted on X days after Trump’s inauguration. “I’m not going to agree with him on all the pieces, however i feel he might be unbelievable for the nation in some ways!”
Altman and OpenAI have discovered a heat welcome in the Trump administration. The White Home’s makes an attempt to showcase financial progress and win in a know-how race with China have led it to embrace OpenAI, whereas the Division of Protection awarded a $200m contract to the company in June for it to develop AI options for “warfighting and enterprise domains”.
“The AI future is not going to be received by hand-wringing about security,” JD Vance stated in a speech at a summit on synthetic intelligence in February. The White Home has not leant a pleasant ear to lawmakers calling for the regulation of AI.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman (R), accompanied by U.S. President Donald Trump, speaks throughout a information convention in the Roosevelt Room of the White Home on 21 January 2025 in Washington, DC. {Photograph}: Andrew Harnik/Getty Pictures
Altman’s shift on Trump has come not solely as tech has lurched to the political proper but additionally as OpenAI faces rising pushback, together with lawsuits from households alleging that its ChatGPT service encouraged users to commit suicide, quite a few copyright infringement lawsuits and concern over data centers’ rising vitality prices.
Whereas Altman has lengthy made broad requires some type of regulation on AI, he has eased off requires oversight over the previous yr and said that requiring government sign-off to launch AI fashions can be “disastrous”. In friendlier environments, the CEO has framed mitigating AI’s harms as one thing that is a burden for regulators and customers. Shortly after the launch of OpenAI’s video app Sora, which drew sizable backlash over producing deepfakes of historic figures resembling Martin Luther King Jr and its potential for creating misinformation at scale, Altman appeared unconcerned with AI video’s implications.
“Very quickly the world is going to have to cope with unbelievable video fashions that may deepfake anybody or form of present something you need. And that may principally be nice,” Altman stated on the enterprise capital agency Andreessen Horowitz’s podcast in October. “There might be some adjustment that society has to undergo.”
He did not communicate a lot about regulation, which he stated “most likely has numerous draw back”.
“I anticipate some actually dangerous stuff to occur due to the know-how, which additionally has occurred with earlier applied sciences,” Altman stated.
“All the approach again to hearth,” Ben Horowitz, the agency’s co-founder, replied.
Nuclear vitality, longevity tablets, mind scans
Whereas Altman has been touring the world as a frontman for OpenAI and generative AI writ giant, he has additionally been constructing out his personal portfolio of investments, which presents a way of the place he thinks the world is heading.
Altman is a giant proponent of nuclear know-how and has referred to as previous bans on nuclear vitality over security considerations “extremely dumb”. He has financially backed the nuclear vitality startup Helion, which in July introduced it had begun construction on a nuclear fusion power plant supposed to feed Microsoft’s monumental knowledge facilities – regardless of the incontrovertible fact that the fusion technology that will presumably fuel the plant is still unproven. Altman additionally served as chair of the board for nuclear vitality startup Oklo till April of final yr, with the firm’s COO announcing that his departure meant the firm may probably accomplice with OpenAI in the future.
Biotech, a typical curiosity amongst Silicon Valley elites, has additionally attracted Altman. One in all his investments is in Retro Biosciences, a long life startup that he backed with $180m that is aiming to launch clinical trials this yr on a capsule supposed to have antiageing results on the mind. He has co-founded Merge Labs, a rival to Musk’s Neuralink mind startup, which raised $252m in funding this month and announced it could collaborate with OpenAI.
“I believe neural interfaces are cool concepts to discover. I would love to give you the option to assume one thing and have ChatGPT reply to it,” Altman informed the Verge final yr.
In the meantime, considered one of Altman’s longstanding ventures, Instruments for Humanity, has been on a years-long effort to scan a billion individuals’s eyeballs utilizing a biometric assortment machine referred to as the “orb”. The info would then be used to verify human id on-line. It has to date scanned roughly 17.5 million people, in accordance to Enterprise Insider.
Altman’s different pursuits have tended to fall into a few of the tech elite’s standard preoccupations, together with at one level saying he was dabbling in doomsday prepping, in addition to meditating with Silicon Valley’s favourite Buddhist monk and mindfulness writer Jack Kornfield. In 2023, Kornfeld stated throughout an interview alongside Altman that the tech mogul as soon as requested him how it could be attainable to know when AI grew to become aware. Kornfeld advised the two “lay down a mat between some servers and take dose of psilocybin and see if it solutions us”.
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