The OpenAI Founders On Their Plan To Battle Elon, Compute And Everything Else

Sam Altman and Greg Brockman did their first media podcast together here. OpenAI's co-founders joined Ashlee Vance and Kylie Robison for a wide-ranging hour plus on the ten-year arc of OpenAI, the products they are actually betting the company on now, and the personal and legal storms swirling around them. Altman and Brockman get into how their partnership really works, where they have clashed on AI safety, and why the old fear-first way of talking about AI was a mistake. They describe the personal AGI coming next with GPT-5.5, a new image model that sounds meaningfully better than anything shipping today, and the Erdős problem that GPT-5.4 Pro recently cracked. Altman also lays out three possible economic futures, including the one with ten trillionaires, and pushes back hard on what he calls fear-based marketing from other AI labs. On the business side, Brockman explains why Sora got cut, how OpenAI is thinking about Codex and coding agents next to Anthropic's Claude, and where the company's own chip, its super app, and its robotics ambitions sit today. Altman takes questions on Anthropic's Mythos, the Department of War dust-up, and whether America can actually compete with China on hardware. He also speaks openly for the first time about the scary incident at his house last week, why the Elon Musk lawsuit is heading to trial, and what he wants the world to finally hear about how OpenAI became OpenAI. About the Hosts Our host Ashlee Vance is a journalist, author, and filmmaker best known for his New York Times bestselling books, including the biography of Elon Musk and When The Heavens Went on Sale. He spent years at Bloomberg Businessweek covering Silicon Valley, space, and the people building the future, where he also created and hosted the Emmy-nominated series Hello World. His documentary work includes Wild Wild Space for HBO and Don't Die for Netflix. Now he runs Core Memory, a media company telling stories about scientists, inventors, and startups changing the world, from biotech labs to factory floors to the edge of space. Kylie Robison is a technology journalist and co-host of the Core Memory podcast. She previously covered artificial intelligence and the tech industry as a reporter at The Verge and Wired. Links OpenAI: https://openai.com OpenAI Foundation: https://openai.com/our-structure/ Codex: https://openai.com/codex TBPN (the podcast OpenAI acquired): https://www.tbpn.com Anthropic: https://www.anthropic.com Brex (sponsor): https://brex.com/corememory E1 Ventures (sponsor): https://e1.vc/ Subscribe to watch more Core Memory videos    / @corememoryvideos   Check out our podcasts    / @corememorypodcast   https://www.corememory.com/podcast Find Ashlee Vance at www.corememory.com   / ashlee.vance   https://x.com/ashleevance Find Kylie Robison at https://x.com/kyliebytes   / kylie.robison   Chapters 00:00 Intro 01:57 10 years in the OpenAI foxhole 07:44 The safety fight you didn't see 11:58 "What will my kid actually do?" 17:11 Why even smart people don't get AI yet 25:42 The personal AGI that knows you 28:20 Why the writing still feels soulless 35:40 Three futures. Ten trillionaires. 44:18 America's hardware problem 49:22 Greg takes the product reins 56:00 Why Sora got cut 58:11 The chip, the super app, what survived 1:02:06 Did Anthropic actually pass OpenAI? 1:04:09 Mythos and "fear-based marketing" 1:09:52 How the AI drama got this toxic 1:11:36 Sam's worst week 1:17:01 The Elon Musk trial Sam wants to have