TBPN · Sep 29, 2026 · 16m · 7m saved
With Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI
OpenAI's own chip program will start coming online in the first half of 2027, Sam Altman said, calling it an advantage the company gets "as much attention" as it deserves.
Twenty years to the week after his first startup, Loopt, launched, Altman came on TBPN from OpenAI's DevDay to talk personal AI agents, compute strategy and where he still thinks OpenAI could get it wrong.
"I think we've tuned the dial a little too conservatively for now."
Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, spoke with TBPN's hosts on stage at DevDay, twenty years to the week after launching his first company, Loopt.
The full interview is covered here so you can skip it.
Here are the 7 takeaways that matter.
Key Takeaways
OpenAI's custom chip program starts coming online in the first half of 2027 and will scale "a lot" in the years after, Altman said
He wants ChatGPT subscriptions to work anywhere, and said he has been "disappointed" watching rival subscription products go the other way
He wants the model picker to disappear, replaced by a single model that adjusts its own speed and cost
He said OpenAI's personal-agent notifications are tuned too conservatively, not too aggressively, and that he personally wants more of them
The way big companies fail is that headcount outruns real work, he said, describing advice from a recent hire who came from a "slow-ish" public company
Cheap, fast iteration lets a developer build all 30 ideas instead of picking one, which he called one of the coolest shifts of the last six months
He said anyone claiming the science of AI alignment is solved "is wrong ... in a very dangerous way"
1. Twenty Years Since Loopt
John Coogan opened by noting that Altman's first startup, Loopt, had launched almost exactly twenty years earlier, and asked whether the moment felt like a full-circle return to that vision of AI agents handling everyday plans.
"It's interesting. It didn't feel like that until right when you said Okay. Now I guess it sort of is." — Sam Altman
Altman said he has mostly used OpenAI's new personal-agent product, called dots, for work rather than his personal life.
"I feel like it has gotten me back like my attention and time and ability to like explore and do new things and I love it for that." — Sam Altman
"I have not yet figured out how to like go use this to have more fun in my personal life. But I'm inspired to go do that." — Sam Altman
Asked whether OpenAI, sometimes called an "accidental consumer company," is deliberately trying to give people back time rather than push them toward working around the clock, Altman said the two goals aren't in conflict.
"I think it's great to give people like more time to hang out with their kids, do their hobbies, work on creative new projects. I think most people actually want that." — Sam Altman
