Altman pushes massive AI plan alongside Trump, Son, and Ellison

Sam Altman is planning to hand over OpenAI not to a person, but to an AI model. He’s not joking. “I would never stand in the way of that,” he said. If artificial intelligence is supposed to run the world, he thinks it should start by running the very company building it.

He’s not looking for a new job either.“The things I really wanted to accomplish, I’ve mostly accomplished,” Sam said.“I feel like I’m playing for bonus points at this point.”

Unless AGI creates an entirely new kind of work, he’s staying right where he is. And from the look of things, he’s not slowing down.

Sam is betting billions on making AI smarter, faster, and stronger, and he wants to prove that no human, not even him, is necessary for the future OpenAI is building.

Altman pushes massive AI plan alongside Trump, Son, and Ellison

On the first full day of President Trump’s second term, Sam showed up at the White House with Larry Ellison and Masayoshi Son. Together, they announced Project Stargate, a $500 billion push to supercharge America’s AI infrastructure. Sam didn’t think half a trillion dollars was enough. Son said, “We discussed, and he said ‘More is better.’ More is better.” That’s how Sam thinks — always bigger.

Sam said working with Trump has been “easy,” even if their goals aren’t the same. Trump is focused on winning for America. Sam says OpenAI’s mission is about “all of humanity.” That tension doesn’t bother him. He sees OpenAI expanding fast and far.

Besides ChatGPT and Sora, they’re building their own AI chips, designing a new social media app to compete with X, and thinking about humanoid robots for factories. They’re also building tools for health care and testing a freemium business model for ChatGPT.

That’s not all. Mark Chen, OpenAI’s chief research officer, said they’re training a kind of “AI researcher intern” to help real scientists move faster.

“We are heading toward a system that will be capable of doing innovation on its own,” Sam said. “I don’t think most of the world has internalized what that’s going to mean.”

Employees raise concerns over speed and missed deals

Not everyone inside OpenAI is cheering. Some employees told Forbes they’re worried the company is growing too fast. GPT-5 didn’t impress them. Then Apple chose Google to power the next Siri, a deal OpenAI thought was already locked. “Yeah, that was not great,” one engineer admitted.

Sam holds stakes in over 400 companies. Some think that shows he’s distracted. Others, like his mentor Graham, just say that’s how Sam operates; he jumps on anything he sees as undervalued. “I bet he finds it hard to resist buying commercial real estate in San Francisco,” Graham said.

At one point, Sam told Forbes, “We basically have built AGI, or very close to it.” Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella didn’t agree. “I don’t think we are anywhere close,” he said, laughing. “It’s not about Sam or me declaring it.” Even as partners, Nadella admitted their companies have “friction.” He called them “frenemies.”

A few days later, Sam walked that statement back. “I meant that as a spiritual statement, not a literal one,” he said. He believes reaching true AGI won’t take one big leap – just lots of medium breakthroughs. “I don’t think we need a big one.”

There’s also a stick of uranium-238 on Sam’s desk. Seriously. He calls it harmless. “That’s depleted,” he said. He even waved a Geiger counter to prove it. He says it reminds him of the kind of physics discovery that led to nuclear energy – or nuclear weapons. “Just a crazy, fast thing.”

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