Late last week, in a rare roundtable discussion in front of a small audience, the editor spent an hour with Sam Altman, former president of Y Combinator and CEO of OpenAI since 2019. In 2015, many others joined to develop artificial intelligence for the “good of mankind.”
The audience wanted to know more about his plans for OpenAI, which has taken the world by storm over the past six weeks with the release of the ChatGPT language model. This is the chatbot that surprised and wowed educators and others. (His DALL-E technology from OpenAI, which allows users to create digital images by simply describing what they envisioned, was slightly hyped when it opened to the public early last year.) It just decreased.)
But Altman is also an active investor, telling the event that the biggest returns to date have come from payments startup Stripe, so we spent the first half of the hour on his most ambitious investment. I spent my time concentrating on
To learn more about supersonic jet companies, startups aiming to make babies out of human skin cells, and more, watch the 20-minute video below. You can also hear his Altman thoughts on his Twitter under Elon Musk’s control and why he’s “less concerned” with crypto and web3. (“I love his web3 people spirit,” he said Altman with a shrug.
We’ll cover more from the fuller conversation soon. In the meantime, here’s an excerpt from his discussion of Altman’s biggest bet: A fusion company called Helion Energy, like OpenAI, has long been an elusive promise (which is one of the abundant energy We aim to achieve 1). Excerpts have been lightly edited for length and clarity.
What was the reason for signing Sam Altman?
At the moment, I try to only do things that interest me. One thing I’ve noticed is that all the companies that I think have added a lot of value are thinking about it in their free time, like hiking, texting their founders or saying, “Hey, I love you.” I have this idea for Every founder deserves an investor who thinks of them during their hike. So I tried to stay with what I really like, what tends to be hard tech. [involving] years of research and development, [is] Either it’s capital intensive, or it’s kind of risky research. But if it works, it really works.
One particularly interesting investment is Helion Energy. You know he’s been funding this company since 2015 but last year people were surprised when he announced a $500 million round including a $375 million check from you I think Not many people can write a $375 million check.
or many people [invest it] In one dodgy fusion company.
What has been your most successful investment to date?
I mean, probably multiple-based, definitely multiple-based: Stripe. Also, I think it was my second investment, so it seemed a lot easier. good. But you know, I’ve been doing this for 17 years, so there’s been a lot of really good stuff. And I am extremely grateful to be in Silicon Valley during such a magical time.
Helion is more than just an investment for me. I spend most of my time outside of OpenAI. I’m so excited to see what happens there.
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory achieved a fusion breakthrough last month. (The scientist announced the first nuclear fusion reaction in a laboratory environment using an approach that included a giant laser, producing more energy than was used to start the reaction.) What are your thoughts on an approach that is so different from Helion’s (Helion reportedly builds a long, narrow fusion machine that uses aluminum big guys to compress the fuel and expands to extract electricity).
I am very happy with them. I think it’s a very good scientific result. As they themselves said, I don’t think it’s commercially relevant. , to build a system that works at an ultra-low cost.
Looking at how energy has changed so far, if we can lower the cost of new forms of energy, we can take over everything else in a few decades. It’s also a system. This is both from the point of view that the machine will not break down and there will be no intermittence or storage of solar, wind etc. If we can produce enough on Earth in ten years or so, I think that’s the hardest challenge that Hellion really faces. Think about what it really means to build a factory that can produce yearly. This is a very difficult problem, but it is also a very fun problem.
So I am very happy that there is a fusion race. I think that’s great. Also, I’m very happy that solar and batteries are getting so cheap. But I think the question is, who has the cheapest and most abundant supply of energy?
Why is Helion’s approach better than what dozens of countries in the South of France are working on?
Well, well, that thing, Iter, will probably work, but I think it’s going to be commercially irrelevant to what I just said. [themselves] I think it becomes commercially irrelevant.
The appeal of the Helion to me is that it’s a simple machine that’s reasonably priced and reasonably sized.There are various elements other than giants [experimental machine being developed by these nations], but what’s very cool is that it’s not heat that comes out of the reaction, but charged particles.most other [alternatives], such as coal plants and natural gas plants, produce heat to drive steam turbines. Hellions create charged particles that push the magnet back, causing an electric current to flow through the wire. No heat cycle at all. This makes for a much simpler and more efficient system.
I think it’s been missed by the whole fusion discussion, [is] Really great. It also means we don’t have to deal with a lot of nuclear material. No hazardous waste or even dangerous systems. It can be touched immediately after the power is turned off.
We are currently building a large facility. Does it still prove its proposition?
We will be able to share more information soon.
