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SA Sam Altman Sam Altman Entrepreneur and investor who has served as CEO of OpenAI since 2019, leading the company behind ChatGPT and its research on artificial general intelligence.

“If we do go public someday, which I assume we will, I plan to spend a lot of time reminding people who might want to buy or might not want to buy our stock, that we are mission-first and that we're also extremely long-term oriented. So we are going to make decisions for what we think is best for society as a whole with this technology. And we're going to make decisions on a multi-decade timeframe.”

Bloomberg Tech · September 2026

“If we do go public someday, which I assume we will, I plan to spend a lot of time reminding people who might want to buy or might not want to buy our stock, that we are mission-first and that we're also extremely long-term oriented. So we are going to make decisions for what we think is best for society as a whole with this technology. And we're going to make decisions on a multi-decade timeframe.” — Sam Altman, Bloomberg Tech

Context

Asked whether OpenAI can keep investing heavily as a public company, where fiduciary duty and financial incentives differ, Altman says he assumes an IPO will happen and sets out what he would tell prospective shareholders.

Transcript

Bloomberg Tech Around 10:03 into the episode
Sam Altman

…I'm confident in the shape of the technology and the work we're doing to enable that to happen. And, you know, of course, like we'll make some money along the way, but I think the opportunity in front of us is so huge. We will be able to continue to bring prices down and still have huge revenue.

Ed Ludlow

…considerations of doing that as a private company versus doing that as a public company, where the sort of financial incentive and fiduciary duty of being a public company isn't necessarily the same as being committed to developing the technology, getting the technology released out into the world?

Sam Altman

If we do go public someday, which I assume we will, I plan to spend a lot of time reminding people who might want to buy or might not want to buy our stock, that we are mission-first and that we're also extremely long-term oriented. So we are going to make decisions for what we think is best for society as a whole with this technology. And we're going to make decisions on a multi-decade timeframe. And we think we'll do really great as a company, but we're going to put those things first.

Ed Ludlow

OpeanAI CEO Sam Altman with us live on Bloomberg Television. Thank you very much indeed.

Speaker 1

A new market, a new partner, a new project. Growth can sound simple, but for one of Thailand's most enduring companies, Bgrim, expansion starts long before any deal is signed. It starts with relationships. It starts with trust.

Ed Ludlow

We follow our vision. That's why we went to America. We enter into the US market for the small hydro project Tradimikawa in Malachar. There are many, many companies that are very successful in their own metrics. And so I think everybody has to define their own way of success. I would find success…

Speaker names come from our own diarization. The position is estimated from where the line sits in the episode.

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