OpenAI chief Sam Altman is the latest tech CEO to line up in support of President-elect Donald Trump.
As the AI race and rally continues, Altman is placing his faith in the repeat president, saying he believes Trump will champion American artificial intelligence.
Like many other Big Tech CEOs, Altman has been vocal about the need for the U.S. To stay ahead of Chinese rivals in key technologies, including AI.
Posting his congratulations to Trump following the Republican candidate’s reelection last month, Altman added in a post on X: “It is critically important that the U.S. Maintains its lead in developing AI with democratic values.”
In an interview over the weekend, Altman was optimistic on this point: “Infrastructure in the United States is super important. AI is a little bit different than other kinds of software in that it requires massive amounts of infrastructure: power, computer chips, data centers.
“We need to build that here, and we need to have the best AI infrastructure in the world to be able to lead with the technology and the capabilities.
“I believe President-elect Trump will be very good at that,” Altman told Fox Business on Sunday. “I look forward to working with his administration on it.
“It does seem to us like this is going to be very important; it does seem like this’ll be one of these unusually important moments in [the] history of technology, and we very much believe that the United States and our allies need to lead this.”
It is critically important that the US maintains its lead in developing AI with democratic values.
— Sam Altman (@sama) November 6, 2024
Of course, Altman isn’t the only Big Tech CEO pitching his case to the incoming administration.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk has long been at the front of the queue, while the likes of Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg have more recently met with the Trump team.
Unluckily for Altman, Trump’s new chief Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) officer is something of a nemesis.
Musk—who donated hundreds of millions of dollars to the Trump campaign and has been awarded the government department and a turnaround on EV rhetoric as a result—has been a persistent critic of OpenAI and Altman.
Let’s not forget that the richest man in the world was one of the founders of OpenAI, but after leaving the business, he went on to launch a rival and then sued the business he helped launch.
The Vance issue
Another issue on Altman’s agenda will be Vice President–elect JD Vance.
Vance has previously questioned whether major players like OpenAI and Meta are calling for regulation because they believe it will ultimately benefit them.
Regulations might, Vance fears, block new entrants from coming into the artificial intelligence markets and simply act to solidify some of the players already leading the game.
Altman, whose work at OpenAI has now made him a billionaire, countered that his business was “the little up-and-comer very recently.”
While it’s true that OpenAI is some way off the multitrillion market caps of the Magnificent Seven, its rivals may raise eyebrows at Altman’s humility—after all, this is a business that has received billions of dollars from Microsoft.
“I think it’s very important to the American innovation economy and our position in the world that we allow our small companies to do what they do,” Altman continued.
“I think one of the most special things about this country is our ability to repeatedly lead the way on innovation and repeatedly figure the future of technology, of science, of progress, and benefit from the enormous growth that happens with that.”
Indeed, the 39-year-old CEO even seemed to support Vance’s view that regulation must not hamper grassroots innovation, adding, “We really as a country don’t want to do anything to impede our smaller companies or make it more difficult for them.”