OpenAI CEO Sam Altman Talks IPO Planning, DevDay

SPEAKER_1 (0:02)

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SPEAKER_2 (0:07)

In just a moment, our own Ed Ludlow, sitting down with OpenAI's Sam Altman, we're gonna take you to the West Coast as soon as that begins. This is happening at OpenAI's DevDay, developers day, company targeting 30 billion in funding at a $1.4 trillion valuation. And that is what their goal was, to get to that valuation.

SPEAKER_3 (0:27)

Yeah, that though is like...

It's not overshadowing, but that's not... DevDay is supposed to be about DOTS, right? This new Muse challenger to Meta. So yeah, okay. Let's go now to San Francisco and to Ed Ludlow, who's standing by with Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI.

Ed Ludlow (0:45)

Sam, do you know what's interesting in the presentation? Is how internally OpenAI staff talk to DOTS.

Do you get what I mean?

Sam Altman (0:54)

I think I do, but tell me.

Ed Ludlow (0:57)

It isn't treating it like AI, like, hey, ChatGPT, question. It's a conversation.

Sam Altman (1:02)

Yeah, yeah.

I don't think it's like you have to pre-morphize. We don't quite talk to it like a person, but there is a different style to it than traditional ChatGPT.

Ed Ludlow (1:11)

The reason I wanted to get to that first is, who's DOTS for, really?

Sam Altman (1:14)

It's starting as a premium product. We know we're putting our best model, Astra, in this.

Ed Ludlow (1:19)

Premium being prosumer, sorry to interrupt, or it's an enterprise product.

Sam Altman (1:24)

More like for getting work done, which I think is largely enterprise, but there's a lot of people that are going to build their own startups that are sort of in the traditional prosumer category. But this is like a very capable model, and it's a ton of usage. So we're starting for something at the top end of the market, and you will see us over time make a mass market consumer version.

Ed Ludlow (1:42)

How much do you and the team, various people at OpenAI benchmark against the agents that are already out there? So how much do you use a Grokbot, a Muse, an Instinct from the product perspective? Because they've been out there a while, and people are actually using them.

Sam Altman (1:58)

I've tried them. I don't use them regularly. I have not found a place for them in my life, but I try to try every major new AR product. This is a totally different category. Like the amount of work, the level of capability, the level of intelligence this can take on.

I think this is just a completely new thing.

Ed Ludlow (2:17)

Why is it different? Like literally, are we talking about its capabilities, or is this an economic discussion of how you've priced it, or where you've made it available in existing tiers?

Sam Altman (2:27)

Well, I mean, it is priced higher than other things in the market, but the reason for that is because of the capability and the amount of compute we're putting into this, which is why I think it's useful in a new kind of way at a new level.

Ed Ludlow (2:40)

You've launched GBT 6.1 Sol at Astra capability.

Sam Altman (2:45)

At the fifth of the price.

Ed Ludlow (2:46)

But the price is so different. And I've been trying to understand what is the big picture story. It seems like we're moving towards cheaper inference at a time where everyone's much more willing to pay for it.

Well, how did you arrive at the tears that you've done?

Sam Altman (3:01)

I mean, we've talked for a long time about our goal is to make increasingly better intelligence and to drive the price down and down. And the reason that I think both of those are true is the better you make AI, the more people want to use it. So people are clearly willing to spend more on AI than ever before, but they want to do so much with it.

So our belief is that if we can continue to drive the quality up and the price down, and really lead the Pareto frontier at every point on that curve, people will use our tools in tremendous ways. And just even here today, like hearing from developers about what they're building with this, and what they can do if we can continue to drive the price down, it's really quite remarkable.

Ed Ludlow (3:41)

What is OpenAI's business momentum right now? How did you end the third quarter? What does that look like?

Sam Altman (3:46)

I don't think we put our specific numbers out, but it is-

Ed Ludlow (3:49)

What is the number of numbers in the newspapers this morning?