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OpenAI’s Sam Altman on Building the ‘Core AI Subscription’ for Your Life
@ Sequoia Capital
05/12/25
Takeaways
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Sam Altman
05/12/25
@ Sequoia Capital
In 2016, we were just a small research lab with 14 people, brainstorming ideas without a clear action plan.
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Sam Altman
05/12/25
@ Sequoia Capital
The first consumer product we launched was DALL-E, not ChatGPT, as we initially focused on building an API to test our systems.
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Sam Altman
05/12/25
@ Sequoia Capital
We realized that to scale our models, we needed to transition from pure research to a business model that could sustain the investment required for large AI models.
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Sam Altman
05/12/25
@ Sequoia Capital
Even though many struggled to build businesses with the GPT-3 API, people loved interacting with it, which led us to develop ChatGPT.
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Sam Altman
05/12/25
@ Sequoia Capital
By the time ChatGPT 3.5 was released, we identified multiple categories where businesses could thrive using the API, driven by the demand for conversational AI.
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Sam Altman
05/12/25
@ Sequoia Capital
We aim to create a core AI subscription that serves as a personalized AI for users, integrating across various services and evolving over time.
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Sam Altman
05/12/25
@ Sequoia Capital
Larger companies often struggle to adapt to AI innovations because they become stuck in their ways, hindering their ability to innovate.
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Sam Altman
05/12/25
@ Sequoia Capital
Young users treat AI like an operating system, using it in complex ways to connect files and automate tasks, while older users often see it as a Google replacement, which is impressive and indicative of future trends.
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Sam Altman
05/12/25
@ Sequoia Capital
The future of AI involves a personalized service that remembers your entire life context, integrating seamlessly across various platforms.
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Sam Altman
05/12/25
@ Sequoia Capital
The current version of OpenAI's API is far from the vision of a personalized AI that knows you and your context.
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Sam Altman
05/12/25
@ Sequoia Capital
Voice interaction is extremely important for OpenAI, but the current voice product is not yet good enough.
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Sam Altman
05/12/25
@ Sequoia Capital
Coding will be central to the future of OpenAI, enabling models to create custom programs and interact with the world.
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Sam Altman
05/12/25
@ Sequoia Capital
The ideal AI model would reason across your entire life context without retraining, integrating all your data seamlessly.
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Sam Altman
05/12/25
@ Sequoia Capital
The value creation in AI will come from building infrastructure, smarter models, and integrating these technologies into society.
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Sam Altman
05/12/25
@ Sequoia Capital
In 2025, I expect coding to be a dominant category, with AI potentially making significant scientific discoveries.
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Sam Altman
05/12/25
@ Sequoia Capital
Founders will face adversity, but the emotional toll of challenges becomes easier to manage over time as resilience builds.
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Sam Altman
05/12/25
@ Sequoia Capital
The hardest part of being a founder is managing the psychological fallout after a crisis, not the crisis itself.