Late last week, sitting in front of a small audience, this editor spent an hour with Sam Altman, former president of Y Combinator and CEO of OpenAI since 2019, the company he founded with Elon Musk. and others in 2015 to develop artificial intelligence “for the benefit of humanity”.
Educators and others are confused and shocked by the public release of the ChatGPT language model, which has taken the world by storm over the past six weeks to learn more about the OpenAI initiative. (OpenAI’s DALL-E technology, which allows users to create digital images by describing what they see, caused quite a stir when it was released to the public early last year.)
But because Altman is also an active investor — his biggest return to date comes from the paid startup Stripe, he said on the show — we spent the first half of our time focusing on the most ambitious investments.
To learn about these, including a supersonic jet company and a startup that’s helping create babies from human skin cells, you can watch the 20-minute video below. You’ll also hear Altman’s comments about Twitter being led by Elon Musk and why he’s “not very interested” in crypt or web3. (“I love the spirit of the Web3 people,” Altman laments. “But I don’t see why we need it.)
We’ll be posting from our full talk soon. In the meantime, here’s an excerpt from our conversation about Altman’s biggest bet: Helion Energy, a nuclear fusion company that’s aiming to turn the long-elusive promise of OpenAI — this abundant energy — into reality. The excerpt has been slightly edited for length and clarity.
What does the Sam Altman deal do?
At this point I just try to do what I want. One of the things I’ve realized is that all the companies that I think I’ve added a lot of value to are the ones that I like to think about in my spare time when I’m hiking or whatever, and then texting the founders. Say, ‘Hey, I have this idea for you.’ Every founder deserves an investor who cares about them while they’re on the move. And so I tried to stick to what I really like, heavy techniques. [involving] Years of R&D, [is] It is capital intensive or risky research. But if it works, it works perfectly.
One investment of particular interest is Helion Energy. You’ve been funding this company since 2015, but when it announced a $500 million round last year, including a $375 million check from you, I think that surprised people. There aren’t many people who can write a check for $375 million.
Or, like, many people want [invest it] In a risky merger company.
What are the most successful investments to date?
I mean, maybe on a multiplex, definitely on a multiplex basis: the strip. I also think, it was like my second investment, so it seemed pretty easy. This was also a time when reviews were different; It was very good. But, you know, I’ve been doing this for 17 years, so there’s been a lot of great things, and I’m very grateful to be in Silicon Valley during such a magical time.
Helion is more than an investment to me. Next to OpenAI is another thing I spend a lot of time on. I’m really excited about what’s going to happen there.
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory had a nuclear fusion breakthrough last month. (Using an approach involving a giant laser, the scientists announced the first fusion reaction in a laboratory setting that produces more energy than was used to initiate the reaction.) I wonder what you think of the process of building a Helion (a long, narrow fusion machine that uses aluminum magnets to compress fuel and then expand it to produce electricity).
I am very happy for them. I think it’s a very cool scientific result. As they said themselves, I don’t think it would be commercially viable. And that’s what I’m excited about – building a system that doesn’t integrate to work in the lab, although it’s great, but works at a very low cost.
If you look at previous energy transitions, if you can reduce the costs for the new energy type, it could take everything in two decades. And then a system where we can create enough power and enough reliable power, both so that the machines don’t break down, and also without the need for solar or wind or things like interruptions or storage. If we can create enough for Earth in like 10 years — and I think that’s the biggest challenge that Helion faces when we figure out what it takes to do that, to replace all of the current generation capacity on Earth with fusion, and do it very quickly and be able to put out two of these machines a day for ten years. To think about what it means to build a factory – this is a very difficult, but extremely interesting problem.
So I’m really happy that there’s an integration contest, I think that’s great. I am also very happy that solar and batteries are getting very cheap. But I think the important thing is who can deliver power cheaply and in sufficient quantity.
Why is Helion’s approach superior to that of dozens of nations operating in the south of France?
Yeah, well, that thing, Ether, I think it might work, but for what I was saying earlier, I think it’s not commercially relevant. They too [themselves] Consider it not commercially relevant.
What I really like about the Helion is that it’s a simple machine at a reasonable price and size. Apart from the giant, there is a collection of different elements of it. [experimental machine being developed by these nations]But the thing that comes out of the reaction is not heat, it is full of particles. Almost all [alternatives]Like a coal plant or natural gas or anything else that produces heat that drives a steam turbine. Helion forms charged particles that repel back against the magnet and drive an electric current into the wire. There is no thermal cycle. And so it can be a much simpler, more effective system.
But I think you missed the whole discussion about integration [is] great. It also means that we don’t have to deal with a lot of nuclear stuff. We don’t even have hazardous waste or hazardous systems. You can touch it soon after it’s turned off.
He is now building a large facility. Has he proven his thesis yet?
We’ll have something to share there soon. . .
My general approach, if there’s an area that I think is very important, like energy, for example, I try to find the best fusion and the best fission company I can. Both are trying to make cheap energy, but we desperately need more cheap energy. It’s a big market; I think both can work.
