Sam Altman on Squawk on the Street
Walmart Beats, OpenAI's Altman and Anthropic's Amodei Talk Exclusively to CNBC 2/19/26
A brief, mostly familiar TV-news appearance: the China and employment answers add little beyond Altman’s recurring competition and disruption themes, while the more promising software-pricing and security ideas are not developed in the supplied exchanges. Safe to skip unless you want his concise pushback on claims that China is already winning.
Welcome back. Open Air is close to finalizing the first phase of a new funding round likely to bring in more than $100 billion. Earlier today Sam Altman spoke exclusively with CNBC at this AI summit in India. He said he can't comment on any potential deal, but here was his response when he was asking about fears that China is beating the US in the arms race. Certainly the progress of Chinese tech companies across the entire stack and also not just in AI but in many fields is remarkable. The reason I'm pushing back on underestimated is it feels like every conversation I have is like oh China's beating us. What do we do about it? So I think people are aware of what's happening there. But yes, Chinese progress is amazingly fast.
Sam Altman discusses China’s fast technological progress, the strategic pressure created by the AGI race, and the unresolved role of guardrails. He also addresses job displacement and argues that AI agents could reshape software pricing, enterprise value, and demand for data security.