Sam Altman, on hotcakes, explores life after GPT-5

I look at Alcatraz Island from a Mediterranean restaurant in San Francisco with a hundred dollars fish on the menu. While I chat with other journalists, the CEO of Openai, Sam Altman, jumps through the door on my left. Altman looks at his naked iPhone to show us all something, and an intrusive thought slips into my mouth: “No phone case is a daring choice.”

Of course, I immediately realize that the billionaire CEO of Openai, who uses Apple’s veteran, Jony IVE, cares more about preserving the original design of the iPhone than the $ 1,000 it costs to replace one.

“Listen, we will send a device that will be so beautiful,” said Altman, referring to OPENAI and FOR FOR COMMENT OF THE AIMA IA. “If you put a business on it, I will track you personally,” he joked.

Altman had gathered about a dozen technological journalists to join him and other Openai leaders for a record dinner (and a dessert outside the record). The night raised more questions than they answered.

For example, why Nick Turley, vice-president of Chatgpt, she exceeds me a lamb skewer a week after launch GPT-5? Was it to make me write beautiful things about the biggest launch of the Openai IA model to date, which was relatively disappointing given the years of media threshing?

Unlike GPT-4, which has far exceeded rivals and disputed expectations of what AI can do, GPT-5 works roughly compared to Google and Anthropic models. Openai even brought GPT-4O rear, And Chatgpt model peakAfter several users expressed their concerns about the GPT-5 tone and its model router.

But throughout the night, it has become clear to me that this dinner was about the future of Openai beyond the GPT-5. Openai leaders have given the impression that the launches of the AI model are less important than they were when GPT-4 was launched in 2023. After all, Openai is now a very different company, focused on the overthrow of actors inherited in research, consumption hardware and corporate software.

Openai shared new details on these efforts.

Altman said the new CEO of OpenAi requests, Simo religionswould supervise several consumer applications outside of Chatgpt – those Openai have not yet been launched. Simo should start working in Openai in a few weeks, and it could end up supervising the launch of a Food browser ai This Openai will develop to compete with Chrome.

Altman suggested that Optai would even plan to buy Chrome – probably an offer that would be taken more seriously than The perplexity offer – If it becomes available. “If Chrome will really sell, we should take a look,” he said, before we look at all and ask: “Is it going to really sell? I assumed that it was not going to happen.”

Simo could also eventually perform an AI propelled Social media application – Something that the CEO of Openai said he was interested in exploring. In fact, Altman says that there is “nothing” that is inspired by how AI is used on social networks today, adding that it is interested in “whether or not it is possible to create a much cooler social experience with AI”.

While Turley and Brad Lightcap, the COO chief of Openai, largely gave Altman, drinking wine alongside other seated guests, Altman also confirmed that Openai plans to support a brain interface startup, Merge laboratoriesTo compete with the neural of Elon Musk. (“We have not yet made this agreement; I would like us to do it.”)

How much this company will be intertwined with the OPENAI models and devices remains to be seen. Altman only described it as a “company in which we would invest”.

Given all these bets – and other OpenAi do around data centers, robotics and energy – Altman clearly has ambitions to manage a much larger company than the simple manufacturer of Chatgpt. The final form could look like Google’s parent alphabet, but perhaps even wider.

In the years to come, it seems likely that Optai will make the public to respond to its requests for massive capital. In preparation for this, I think Altman wants to refine his relationship with the media. However, I think that Optai also wants to go to a place where it is no longer defined by its best model of AI.