Science & Tech · AI · 3 hrs ago
Sam Altman says AI disruption could create opportunities for young entrepreneurs
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman says AI will reshape many jobs, though he cautioned that the change may come more slowly than some expect.
In an interview with Stanford business school students, he said AI could do many tasks better, faster and more cheaply, and may take over whole areas of work as they are done today.
Altman urged young people, including MBA students, to pursue new ideas rather than old trends.
He sees AI as a way to build companies tackling problems that were difficult or impossible to address a few years ago.
Altman said new businesses built using OpenAI technology could become larger and more important than OpenAI itself.
The opportunity matters because new companies can start with AI, rather than having to add it to older systems.
In the United States, people filed 5.7 million applications to start businesses in 2025, the highest annual total in the two decades the Census Bureau has tracked the figure.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman says AI disruption could create opportunities for young people who are willing to pursue new ideas and businesses.
He says many tasks will be done better, faster and more cheaply by AI, and that wide areas of today’s jobs may be handled by AI.
Altman cautions that the transformation may take longer than many people expect.
He says AI could make it possible to build companies that were difficult or impossible to create a few years ago.
The US recorded 5.7 million applications to start businesses in 2025, the highest annual total in the two decades the Census Bureau has tracked the data.
- Who
- OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, speaking about young workers and entrepreneurs.
- What
- Altman says AI disruption could open opportunities for young people to build new businesses.
- When
- He discussed the topic in an interview with Stanford’s Graduate School of Business last week, according to the articles.
- Where
- The interview was with Stanford’s Graduate School of Business.
- Why
- Altman says AI could enable new businesses and that people with ideas and new skills may do well during major change.
This story does not have two clearly opposing sides.
Altman dropped out of Stanford to cofound location-based social networking startup Loopt.
Altman served as president of startup accelerator Y Combinator.
Americans filed 5.7 million applications to start businesses, the highest annual total in the two decades the Census Bureau had tracked the data.
Altman discussed AI and opportunities for young entrepreneurs in an interview with Stanford’s Graduate School of Business.
- Business applications in 2025
- 5.7 million in the United States
- Loopt
- Cofounded by Altman in 2005
- Y Combinator presidency
- 2014–2019
- Interview
- Stanford’s Graduate School of Business, last week
3 sources
What people are saying
It’s totally true that huge numbers of tasks that people do today will be done better, cheaper, and faster by AI—and completely differently
My chronic disappointment with MBA students is that they always want to go do the thing that was cool five years ago rather than try something new
I think this is a great time to go do the new thing
There are many companies that can be built on top of the technology OpenAI has put out into the world that will be much bigger and, I hope, more important than OpenAI