Sam Altman is way more interested in AI’s next chapter than upheaval at OpenAI

• Sam Altman took the stage at Italian Tech Week and laid out his vision for the future of AI.
• He was speaking hours after the exit of CTO Mira Murati, the latest executive to leave OpenAI.
• OpenAI faces growing competition and is reportedly working to alter its nonprofit structure.

Sam Altman might be facing upheaval at OpenAI, but that isn’t stopping him from discussing his grand plans for the company’s next stage.

Altman took the stage at Italian Tech Week conference on Thursday, just hours after CTO Mira Murati announced she would be leaving the company.

He thanked Murati, who briefly replaced Altman as CEO when he was ousted last year, but said her departure was simply routine — and unrelated to reports that OpenAI is considering abandoning its nonprofit structure.

“Our board has been thinking about that for almost a year, independently, as we think about what it takes to get to our next stage,” said Altman, who was being interviewed by Stellantis chairman John Elkann.

“I think this is just about people being ready for new chapters of their lives and a new generation of leadership.”

Altman had other things on his mind, however, and quickly moved on to discuss one of his favorite topics — how he thinks AI will change the world.

‘Better everything’

“The two trends I’m most excited about for the next couple of decades are abundant intelligence and abundant energy,” Altman told the audience.

“The prosperity that we’re going to get from these two things is really quite remarkable. The growth, the increase in quality of life we can have in the world — better sustainability, better education, better healthcare, better everything,” he added.

It’s not the first time Altman has talked up the glorious future that AI — and by extension, OpenAI — may usher in.

But it comes amid a rocky patch for the company. Murati’s departure is the latest in a series of high-profile executive exits, which also include cofounders Ilya Sutskever and John Schulman.

The company is also facing growing competition from the likes of Anthropic, Google and Meta, and a high-profile lawsuit from Elon Musk.

OpenAI is reportedly working to overhaul its structure as it seeks to raise funds at a $150 billion valuation — and the company is discussing giving Altman a 7% equity stake, Bloomberg reported.

He previously said he didn’t need equity in the startup because leading OpenAI was itself a benefit and he had “enough money.”

Altman didn’t address the report about an equity stake directly during the interview in Italy.

However, in a discussion of the history of technology, he praised the joint-stock company model, which exists to turn a profit and is a far cry from OpenAI’s non-profit structure, describing it as “the single most important invention of the Industrial Revolution.”

‘Abundant energy’

The OpenAI CEO described an abundant supply of clean energy, coupled with widespread access to intelligent AI, as crucial to making the next great technological leap forward.

“What we should have is massive, sustainable growth, and technology is the only way to get there,” Altman said, adding he expected promising demonstrations of next-generation nuclear power sources to occur within the next few years.

“If we can get abundant cheap energy, if we can make AI available to everybody at a super high level of quality, that’s how things actually get better,” Altman said.

Energy is likely to play a big role in Altman’s “next chapter” for OpenAI.

According to a Bloomberg report, the company recently pitched the White House on building a series of massive data centers to train next-generation AI models that would require as much electricity as an entire city.

Altman has previously called for massive investment in AI infrastructure, warning that making AI technology widespread would require “lots of energy and chips.”

OpenAI did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider, sent outside normal working hours.