Sam, thanks for joining us.

>> This is something

>> this is like a lot bigger than the

earlier startup schools.

>> Yeah, I mean startups are a lot bigger

now than they have ever been. So

>> sure. [cheering]

[applause]

>> I mean they've bigger they're bigger

than they've ever been because of uh the

vision that you had for AGI which is

nigh. I think this is going to be the

best time in the world to do a startup

and uh it's gonna be quite amazing to

see.

>> So I wanted to start with um you know a

time and place uh which is you were in

the very first batch of Y Combinator in

2005 with um location sharing company

called Looped. Um what do you remember

about that and what was your best PG

Paul Graham story? Um, I think if it

were possible to get as like far from

this moment as like I can imagine, it

was, you know, startups are not cool at

all. We were like hiding out in this

little building in Cambridge. PG was

making us dinner. Um, and

you know what took

three months to build at the time that

we each company built over the whole YC

startup could now be done with like in

like seven minutes by a coding agent.

And it was only I mean only 20 20 years

ago. Uh and I think the the difference

in what's possible for a startup now uh

what a startup can take on you know it's

pos I think you could either be sad and

be like oh man like a codeex prompt is a

whole startup or you could be like I can

go start the world's most ambitious

crazy company I can have like experts in

every field working together I can do

these very hard technological things

that were just impossible um and it's

going to be amazing but at the time it

felt nothing like that and it was very

difficult to get anything to

I think Paul Graham is probably the most

important force in startups of the last

few decades and

>> without question. Yes.

>> No question. Um

[applause]

and and my kind of Paul Graham memory is

we would all every week come I think it

was on Tuesdays and he would like cook

he himself would cook us dinner and we

would all walk in feeling like very

hopeless and very dejected and we would

there were eight companies and then we

would all go home at the end of it and

he had convinced like each of us that

our startups were about to like take

over the world and we're going to be

like you the next Google or whatever

Facebook maybe at the time. And that

ability to sort of like create optimism

and momentum and belief out of nothing

was like a real PG special. And in the

early days when YC seemed like a

terrible idea and startups seemed like a

bad idea and certainly startups that

were like young technical founders with

no business people seemed like a

terrible idea, PG just sort of like

willed it into existence.

But it also takes someone who actually I

mean you're sort of famously um par

excalance uh an agentic person like even

before we thought about agents period. I

mean you just

>> uh I remember Paul wrote um I mean it's

making the rounds on X today even that

uh Paul wrote in the early in the late

2000s that you would be you were one of

the top five entrepreneurs he'd ever

met.

>> That's very nice of me to say. Um, I I

think like many 20-year-olds, I had like

a lot of energy and a lot of ambition,

but it was sort of very

not directed and I wasn't sure what to

do. Paul had this thing he used to say

of like uh the the job of being a good

startup investor

is a teacher, but it's a kind of teacher

we don't usually use. Like we usually

think of teacher as someone who like

gives a lecture and you can't help

someone that much by like giving a

lecture about a startup. There's another

kind of teacher which is like a flight

instructor. the person who like sits

next to you saying like do this, don't

do this, that work, this is, you know,

you missed that thing or you're making

these mistakes and I'm just going to

talk to you about this one and that very

like hands-on kind of

uh you know, here's where to like direct

this sort of like brownie in motion

energy. That was very important to me.

>> Yeah. I I guess later you uh came on to

become president of YC and um you you

sort of brought exactly the same energy

to uh a great many YC founders over the

years. Um did you have anything like did

anything jump out at you from that time

around you know taking this raw energy

of someone really really smart and maybe

a little undirected and then driving

them more towards agency.

>> Yeah. I so first of all I love startups.

I think not everyone they're not like

for everyone but I think startups are

the coolest thing in all of business. Um

I think startups are really like the

main thing that keeps the economy from

becoming stagnant. Um I think companies

do just like drift towards suckiness and

startups will continue to be important

forever. In fact, if if we are right

that AI is going to be such a big

change, startups will be much more

important to making sure that the power

of this technology gets widely

distributed throughout the economy and

society and is not just concentrated in

a few companies or models. So I

I think startups are this like

unbelievably cool, fun, extremely

painful and difficult but wonderful

thing. And

I think a big part of job the job of

running YC is you are kind of the like

unofficial flag bearer for the startup

movement. Um you know like there

there's lots of startups. There's lots

of ways to do a startup. You obviously

don't need to do YC but it has always

been a huge help to companies and a very

powerful force. And so starting with PG

uh and then all of us like you know we

have to like make YC successful but I

think we really have to like fight for

why startups are important and why

people should consider startups and help

put like relatively more power in the

hands of founders and encourage more

people to start them. And that's

actually worked really well. I think

thinking back to the early days of YC

there's like

very little leverage in being a founder

relative to an investor and that shift

uh you know I think that's even been

good for the investors. I think it's

just been like much better for the whole

startup ecosystem. So

mostly what I tried to do at YC was just

push for more startups and encourage

people to think about startups and

figure out what we could do to help

founders and help make startups and the

startup ecosystem is as good as

possible. Definitely part of that was

pushing people towards more ambition and

bigger swings. Um, but it feels like the

minor leagues relative to now. I mean, I

think you were one of the people who

really brought hard tech to uh YC in a

really grand way. And then one of the

things we're seeing at YC now is that

number was, you know, maybe five or 10%

for many years and then now we're

getting to 15 20 25%. Uh I would argue

on the back of how much easier it is uh

to use agents and cost coming down.

>> I I think like ambitious startups are

always awesome and hard tech startups

are appealing to a lot of people but

they're hard or they've been hard. They

still will be hard. But what you can do

now to go take on a really ambitious

project like in the same way that you

can make the startup that took us 3

months of non-stop work in 17 seconds

with three months of work and a lot of

agents you can do unbelievable things.

So I think we will see a golden age of

startups where people are like you know

what I'm going to do things that would

have been completely impossible for a

startup to even like dream at a year ago

in in sort of like the YC time frame. I

mean that's actually a really big

reframe. I mean there are probably

people even in this room who might be

worried that well uh intelligence on tap

means that you know they might be

looking at a loop or my startup

posterous and they're like well I can't

start that company anymore but guys that

was like a long time ago actually

man there's this whole meme going around

which is like

you know you have to join a frontier lab

or you're going to be a member of the

permanent underclass because it's so

dumb. um be because there's going to be

like, you know, startups are over and

there's like no economic value. I

that's not true. I mean, if that were

true, the world is like totally [ __ ]

and it's a a very bad place. But it's I

I would bet that the average startups

created today will be like I bet there's

some future trillionaire sitting in this

room and I would bet that the startups

created today will be much more

valuable, much more impactful than

startups of the past. And I kind of

think people see that a little bit more

now. I mean, there was this period where

like are is AI just going to break the

whole economy and I I think people are

like mostly over the sort of shock

response of that. Um but there was like

yeah definitely a time I would you know

come every YC batch and I I'll be

interested to see how the kind of like

level of anxiety versus ambition was

trending and it feel like it went

through this like big trough where

people are like you know it's over it's

models are just going to eat everything

to now it's back towards like let's go

do it.

>> What are some practical things here? I

mean heartche for instance I was hearing

uh you know at one of the breaks someone

was asking like should I go get my PhD?

How important are credentials? Um, you

know, how would you answer that?

Especially people who want to do these

harder tech things. I

Well, as a general observation first, I

think startups tend to win when um

the sort of like technology landscape is

moving very quickly. uh when costs are

coming down when cycle times are short

and

all of those things are happening right

now. So if if you look at when there

have been like the great clusters of

startups in the past, you know, there

was the internet boom in whatever that

was like 998 99 when new things became

possible. Um there was another version

of a mini version of people building on

top of basically like Facebook apps.

There was then another big version when

the iPhone app store launched. Um but

the great startups tend to cluster when

the ecosystem shifts and incumbents lose

a lot of their advantage. And then also

when you have this like cost and cycle

time change. Uh I this moment feels very

big for those things. It also has this

other thing that you were talking about

which is a lot of the traditional things

that were hard to get expertise

you know the ability to go like hire

excellent people that were that could do

specific things you needed. That's

really shifted and in the last few

months um I have seen a lot of people

who just kind of grew up

using AI the last few years who are like

I can kind of automate an entire startup

of agents and four of us four people and

you know all this compute and I think

we're going to see much more of that I

clearly like taste and agency and

understanding of kind of like the

physics of business like where you can

build up a valuable business how to

think what about like a good network

effect or sort of a good moat looks like

versus a fake one. Um, but I would I

would bet that this generally will cut

against many years of experience in

favor of people who have a lot of

fluency with the tools.

I guess I want to get into the beginning

of OpenAI and that it actually started

as YC research looking at this idea. I

mean, kind of a crazy idea that, you

know, you and um a ragtag crew decided

we're going to dedicate our lives to

this um creation of AGI, but at you

know, today it it sounds fatal fatal

complete, right?

>> Yeah.

>> But that really wasn't how it felt when

you started.

>> It's really hard because it now it like

is the only thing people want to talk

about. It's really hard to remember what

it was like. It's even hard for me to

remember this without like finding notes

from the time 10 years ago when everyone

was like, not only are they wrong about

saying they think it might be possible

to build AGI, but they're going to

they're single-handedly going to cause

another AI winter. It's they're wrong

and irresponsible and bad. Um it

and and maybe like my highest

order or like my highest bit of advice

to all of you um is find the things

that you can develop like reasonable

conviction in that people decide like

the conventional wisdom is they're just

wrong. And be okay with it taking a long

time and having people be like very

you know, very frustratingly wrong and

dismissive. For years at OpenAI, it felt

like we knew the biggest secret in the

world. Everybody was calling us an

idiot. Uh, and we had increasing data

points to convince ourselves we weren't

delusional. And

it was very frustrating. It was

extremely frustrating. Um, but it

looking back it was like an incredible

gift because it meant we didn't have

this like massive competitors and we had

time to do our research and build our

stuff and build our company. Um, and

I've since noticed that this is the case

for like

a a lot of companies in different ways.

They they end up doing something that

other people that like experts in the

field or the industry are convinced is a

very bad idea. Um,

and on the other side of this, if you're

starting the same startup as everybody

else, it's like you get a lot of hype

and you can raise a lot of money, but

it's it's sort of like those are much

less frequently the big option, the big

outcomes. So, if I were you all, I would

figure out what the really big brand new

thing is that is possible now that

wasn't possible a few years ago. In our

case, it was no AI had really been

working and then the deep learning magic

moment happened and the world didn't

update enough. the world. This is

another great PGism. The world does not

understand how to intuitit exponentials

and so they missed this one. There's got

to be new exponentials forming right

now. I don't know what they are. But if

you can figure those out and if you can

develop continuing conviction based on

more data, be grateful that the world

doesn't understand. They will

eventually. This is like a huge

superpower. It sounds like in your

journey there were like a few different

things that stacked. Maybe the first one

was even uh that AGI was possible to be

built and finding other people who

believed that thing. You know, it didn't

matter that lots of people didn't think

it was possible. It it mattered that you

found really really smart people who did

believe that. Yeah. We used to joke that

only um 50 people in the world believe

that AGI was possible, but it was okay

because 45 of them worked at OpenAI. Um

and I think that's kind of true. Like

you don't need a ton of people. Uh, and

in fact saying the heretical thing was

probably why those people wanted to like

all be together. So, so again, I think

like really figuring out what you

believe, being willing to be

misunderstood for a long time and

bringing together the like crew of

misfits that believes it. That's also

what YC was like in the early days.

One of the things that people in the

room are probably thinking is like,

well, I believe this thing, but I

haven't found my people yet. Like, is

that delusion? You know what? Is that

actually maybe even a gate that you

would propose people have? It's like,

well, you need to find, you know, five

people who might believe that or even

one like a co-founder, you know, people

maybe that's one of the explanations for

why we like co-founders at YC so much.

>> Yeah, I think if you can't find anybody

else that shares your belief, you should

pay attention to that. Um,

and it's also very hard to do a startup

on your own and very lonely. But I don't

think you need to find a lot of people.

And in fact, if everybody believes it,

that's also like a bad a bad sign. Um,

the question, I don't know if this is

still

what feels like the limiter on more

startups. But five or 10 years ago, what

felt like was limiting the number of

good startups YC could fund is figuring

out how to solve the co-founder matching

problem. Like a lot of really talented

people, and they just couldn't find

their tribe. They couldn't find their

people. Um,

you know, it used to be very heretical

that YC told people they had to move to

San Francisco.

And looking back, it was clearly right.

I think I don't know if this is still

going to be true for the next 10 years.

I suspect it will be, but the best thing

you could do if you wanted to like find

your people to do a startup with was to

move to the Bay Area. You just like

magic happened. You got a lot of like

lucky chances and collisions. Um, I

still think that's probably good advice,

although I feel like I have less of an

intuition for it now. Um,

I also think that

I I can say this, Gary probably can't. I

I I think the premium on doing YC is

bigger now than it's like ever been

before. Uh, the distance between like YC

and second place is has expanded. And

this is a reminder of the power of

network effects. And so finding networks

that you can be part of uh that help you

just meet those people like the people

that I started OpenAI with, I met like

many many years in some cases before uh

starting OpenAI and I kind of like got

to know them over the long like a very

long career journey

and this happens again and again and so

the sooner you can put yourself just in

a flow where you're going to meet the

people that will be your eventual

co-founders for startup or the next one

or whatever, I I think the better. It

takes a long time to compound.

>> I I guess I'm keying off what you just

said, which is like, you know, some of

the people you ended up starting, you

know, all these different things with,

you didn't necessarily know uh what that

was for or that it would be useful in a,

you know, sort of network setting at

all. Like you just collected cool,

interesting people. I think you you do

this. I think Peter Keel does this

really really well. What would you say

to a room full of people who are just

starting out and like figuring out who

their people are? Ju

>> just like your highest confidence piece

of advice here is just like find a way

to be like mildly helpful to a lot of

people. It's like fun to do. You'll see

a lot of interesting stuff. Um it's like

kind of gratifying to be helpful. But

you know, even that example you were

just talking about, I met Greg Brockman,

uh, my co-founder, OpenAI, because I was

a very early investor in Stripe when I

was like, 22 or something, and they were

like, this was before they had, you

know, like real investors that could

really help them. And they said, you

know, we're trying to close our first

hire. Um, will you like drive down to

Palo Alto tonight and have dinner with

this guy to convince him he should like

drop out of school and join Stripe,

which is Greg Brockman. Um, and then

like eight years later, we started a

company together. So, and I could like,

you know, we you could too. We could

like spend the rest of this time just

telling stories like that that was

totally unpredicted but ended up being

important in big ways. So, I I have

Yeah, it's fun to do and I think you

should do it for its own reason or it's

like its own sake, but just like helping

people a lot uh really goes a long way

in terms of these things coming together

later. I mean, I think that's actually a

really important message, you know. So,

one of the things, one of the memes

right now is um uh I see it on X is uh

live action roleplay. That's like one of

the things that people have been saying

on X. I mean, I I can't tell why they're

doing it because it just seems wrong to

me. Like, I mean, one of the uh things

that we really love at YC, for instance,

is uh earnestness. And also, words

matter. So, you know, this idea that

what we're trying to do is a live action

roleplay is like kind of deeply

offensive to me. Actually,

>> it's very

>> Sorry guys, please don't do that.

>> They say that about YC specifically.

>> No, there people just attendees in this

room have been tweeting that and we'd

like them to stop.

>> What are they claim What What's the

claim blog?

>> I think it's just um being a little

sarcastic about and you know it's

sarcasm is sort of the opposite of what

I think you and I like. because it's

like we like earnestness who's like

we're actually trying to do a thing

here.

>> I'll tell you another thing. Um, can I

go on a little rant? Okay,

>> rant away.

>> G, one of the annoying things I can say

these things for Gary because he can't

say them right now, but you know, he'll

say them for the next guy. Um, one of

the many annoying things about running

YC is you just have to deal with these

haters on Twitter all of the [ __ ]

time.

It's so frustrating. you have to sit

there and be like a statesman. Well,

you're better at it. I kind of like took

the bait a lot. Um, and you just want to

argue with them. And

and the thing that I realized eventually

and take from this whatever you want is

it is very hard to run YC or run a

startup or, you know, create like an

actual thing of value in the world. It

is very easy to go take shots on Twitter

and make a sarcastic comment and get a

lot of likes and feel like you're doing

something really important and sticking

it to the man and being like, "Gary,

haha, I got you, you idiot." Um, and and

it will poison your soul. It is a

morally bankrupt thing to do. Um, it is

and it's like bad in a very insidious

way. Like I totally get blowing off

steam and having fun, but don't like

hold yourself to a higher bar than this.

Don't

It's so easy to take shots at people

that are trying to do hard things and

trying to build companies and you'll see

some like, you know, kid with a bad

startup idea trying to get excited about

what he's doing on Twitter. It's so easy

to like make a sarcastic comment and get

the 10,000 likes and feel like, man, I

really like I scored my internet points

today. Um,

but it'll have an effect on you. And the

when I like reflected on the years of

like Twitter trolls that said mean

things about YC and startups while I was

running YC, I was like, I bet there were

like a lot of days where they really

felt like they got me. And like over the

decade, none of them did. And you should

like put all of your energy into

building stuff and like resist the easy

shots.

>> I mean, I really like this as a conte

seriously. [applause]

[cheering]

I mean, I like this as a contrast to uh

the story you just told about helping

Patrick with Greg Brockman. I mean, you

know, it help like there are people in

this room who are going to be lifelong

friends and they're going to do that for

one another and then sort of these

magical connections happen like you know

this already is the most rarified set of

people and then when you join YC it's

like even more rarified and then there's

just a set of people out there who like

they're ambitious. you know, someone in

this like someone in this room is going

to meet someone else that you're going

to start a company with and somebody

you'll meet somebody that will introduce

you to your spouse. Like there all of

these things will happen and then there

will be a bunch of non-obvious things

that take a decade or two to figure out

and some way you know one of you will

help each other now which will turn into

some amazing new thing. Um

I think this is a huge part of what has

made YC work and the broad broader

startup ecosystem. I I think this is

like a for all of the negatives of the

culture of the Bay Area, this is the

kind of like loose network and the

spirit of helping each other and this

like very long-term outlook has been an

awesome thing.

>> Yeah.

>> Well, let's uh let's get back to the

impending AGI.

>> Okay. [laughter]

>> Um

I guess you had a I mean we've all had a

an eventful week with uh the hugging

face. I wonder what you can tell us

about that. And I think that's actually

a really big moment for uh people

including me who you know uh in the past

I've been known to be skeptical about um

safety and AI but on the other hand like

this is a real m like we're entering a

new moment in um what's happening with

these frontier models.

>> Yeah. This this is the real deal. Um and

I think anybody who's not taking it

seriously and at least

a little bit scared or humbled were a

lot of those things. But at least a

little bit is is not taking us seriously

enough. Um

you know for a long time the field has

been talking about

AI safety incidents of this kind of a

shape and this is not a big one. I also

don't want to overblow it and say this

is like a real loss of control incident

and this is the this is the thing. But

if you had asked most people when we

started 10 years ago like where on the

spectrum of nothing to super

intelligence do you have like an AI

system

breaking out of its sandbox and hacking

into some other company and kind of you

know doing what this happened. I think

like people would have said pretty far

towards the like super intelligence

point. Now the goalposts have moved and

it's easy to say well you know here were

the here's how this happened and here

are the mistakes that OpenAI made and we

did make some big ones of course but

these systems have gotten incredibly

capable. Um so I think it's an alignment

failure. I think it's a security

failure. I think it's like a very

serious thing even though it's you know

not not the biggest example of

consequence. Um

and I think it's a real reminder of the

stakes of what's happening and that loss

of control accidents are not entirely

theoretical things. Um I think we will

learn we the whole field we open and I

will learn a lot from this one and be

able to address it. But um

you know the things that I there there

are all of the things about like cyber

safety and biosafety but this other

category of things that have been maybe

just outside the public's overton window

of it's really important we don't have a

loss of control accident with AI. It's

really important we don't have power be

too concentrated in a small number of

models or companies but diffused

throughout the economy so people can

defend themselves like I um you know

it's really important that people human

values are guiding these systems every

step of the way. Uh

yeah I think we're like in the real the

real deal phase of this. I mean I really

like how you've been thinking about both

concentration but also thinking of open

AI as a utility which is actually a

really important message because not

everyone out there is saying that

message like you know there's

>> there's a lot to be worried about in

terms of concentration power I think

concentration of power has basically

been bad in every moment of human

history um to varying degrees of course

but I have a real spirit and I think

this is part of the startup spirit

of thinking that the world, the economy,

society is

the best off when power is very widely

distributed and when anybody with a

great idea can start a company or make a

great art project or, you know, run for

office or do whatever they want. Um, and

I can totally imagine worlds where AI

leads to the greatest distribution of

power we've ever seen. And I can also

imagine worlds where AI concentrates

power to a degree we have never seen.

Um, and one company or person or model

having more power than everybody or

everything else on Earth put together,

whatever the sci-fi stories have said, I

think that's terrible. Um, and would

really, you know, maybe we would get

some short-term safety benefit from

that, but long-term disaster. uh I don't

think any of us should want to be locked

into one one AIS or one person's or one

company's moral worldview. Um I think

startups have a very important role to

play here. Uh you know one way that that

happens is too much economic

concentration in one company or one AI

model and I think startups

because of the things we talked about

earlier will be naturally very well

suited to make sure that this is widely

distributed. Um but we want to enable as

many startups, as many companies, as

many people as possible. And that means

that we have to, you know, be fairly

quite reserved about not uh imposing our

worldview about what we think people

should or shouldn't do with AI or even

what we think the good ideas are while

still making sure that we can ensure

enough of a safety bar that stuff like

the hugging face incident is not

happening.

>> Um one of the things is, you know, this

is a room full of people who will do

really amazing things. they're often

right at the beginning of their career

um and they might look at AI safety or

concentration of power and say well you

know I can't really do it that that must

be something the labs have to do like

you know there is something they can do

though um

I mean you can help on the concentration

of power issue simply by starting a

successful startup that's the only thing

you do and the economy keeps working in

the kind of magic of capitalism and

having this ecosystem that works

together continuing uh that alone would

be a huge contribution but

look I I think it's very natural at the

beginning of a career to doubt yourself

and not assume you can go do an amazing

thing um I certainly went through that

I'm sure you went through that you you

kind of learn as you go on you can do

more and more um there will be far more

like I I think it is both true that

you know maybe creating super

intelligence will be the most important

thing yet to happen in the history of

business or human society and also that

it will pale in comparison to some new

startup something that hopefully one of

you will do. Uh and so this whole this

whole trap of like this is the end of

history, this is the end of the economy

like clearly wrong. Um, and I think the

right approach is you can now do three

months of work in 17 minutes, but you

better just go do three months of work

in three months of work. What the

whatever the new bar for that is.

I guess I would be remiss in uh asking

you know what alpha leak can you give us

about what's the latest about what you

know how much more awesome are the

models going to be to the extent you can

say I think there will I think it will

feel like the next six months is like

maybe equivalent to the last two years

of model progress something like that so

I think we'll go through like a very

steep

uh we'll go through like a very steep

period which again never a better time

to do a startup than right now. I hope

we can say that again every year from

now on, but it's certainly true about

this to any moment in history.

>> Let's see. If someone here has an idea

that feels too ambitious, what would you

tell them?

>> I would love to hear that pitch.

>> Yeah,

>> I'd probably be very interested in that.

>> Yeah.

>> Um Yeah, send me an email. Yeah, it

sounds like it would um it would take a

similar shape to uh creating open AI and

that like do you need to be ready for uh

people to attack you or dismiss you?

Definitely. I mean, if you do anything

that matters in the world, uh you will

have a lot of people call you an idiot

or just dismiss you.

The more you do, the more the better you

do, the more they'll attack you. um the

more you kind of like threaten the

existing

state of the world, it will just

continue to escalate. Um

one thing that I've noticed about many

of the best ideas is the vision is

clear. Like we wanted to build AGI, but

this the first steps were super unclear.

Like we didn't know that we were going

to be a product company. We started this

nonprofit research lab for many reasons,

but one of which was it it really didn't

occur to us that we were going to make a

product that people would be able to pay

for. Like this was, you know, it was

years till we came up with the idea of

ChachiBT, the API.

And so I think if the the kind of like

highest level vision is clear, but the

first few steps are very unclear, that's

not a bad thing. That often happens with

like very ambitious ideas and I wouldn't

let that

cause you to lean out. Now you do still

have to take some steps forward

imperfect though they may be and ours

was certainly very imperfect. So there's

like another failure case where you have

this like brilliant big idea and you can

kind of never make any forward progress.

At some point you got to just like get

some new data points.

>> Yeah.

>> What do you think's going to happen to

inference? I really like Run's tweet

about this. It's like you either uh

you're either you either die a model

company or uh live long enough to sell

inference, which is a very funny Rune

tweet. I I think what he meant with that

tweet is uh you know like if you end up

falling off of the sort of model

frontier you can at least sell the

inference like not even the inference

training comput someone like compute is

so valuable that if you buy a lot of

compute as a

>> AI lab you've been okay by the fact that

you can resell it to somebody else but

separately

I would guess that worldwide demand for

inference so a kind of subjective ly

grows 10x a year for the next many

years.

>> I mean, it might be I don't know by by

our accounts internal to YC, it's like

might be 90,000x. I mean, it's going to

be

>> I don't think the world can support that

many years of a thousandx in a row.

>> Fair enough.

>> But we'll try our best. We'll figure

something out. I mean the capacity I

guess it just it's a function of how

much bigger your ambitions are for

intelligence and how you know I if you

do a lot more I think we will sort of

never be out of the compute shortage. Uh

I've never seen any commodity quite like

this one but it seems to me like the

demand for sufficiently high quality

intelligence at a sufficiently low price

is effectively uncapped.

the the demand for electricity certainly

goes up up as the price goes down, but

at some point like

it gets harder to figure out incremental

things to do with electricity. At least

historically it has. But you know,

there's a lot of things to do with

incremental intelligence. You can just

keep having stuff be better for you. It

reminds me of some of those quotes from

the early computing revolution when

people would say like, you know, no one

needs more than 640K of RAM or whatever

in their computer. Turns out you do. we

just keep thinking of like more and

better stuff. And I think that's going

to happen with AI and

actually maybe a statistic here that I

really like. Six and a half years ago,

the world token leader was an OpenAI

employee using about a 100,000 tokens a

month.

And this seemed ludicrous at the time.

The worldwide average uh per capita was

like zero. Uh now the worldwide average

of tokens per month which I think tokens

are the dumbest metric but it's what

what we have is like a 100 thousand and

the token leader at OpenAI uses

something in the hundreds of billions.

If that happens again which I think it

probably will uh then in another six and

a half years the average person uses

let's say 500 billion tokens a month and

the token leader uses a quadrillion or

quadrillions of tokens a month. Um, and

I think that will just become the

expectation.

>> So all of these things happen, they come

to pass, it's 10 years from now. Um,

what's the best version of that that 10

years from now with intelligence fully

on tap, super intelligence here. Uh, and

we figure it out. We make it, you know,

the society makes it. I I kind of think

if every year

people have more freedom and agency to

spend more of their time doing the stuff

they want to do and they feel like the

quality of life and the quality of their

time is going up year after year, we'll

probably be mostly okay. We will have

avoided like a crazy concentration of

power or an economic collapse. We'll

have necessarily avoided a huge safety

um incident. will have avoided like too

much change in any one time unit. Um,

and you know, there's like one dystopia

that I'm particularly nervous about 10

years from now is we overreact to AI

safety. And so we say, look, everyone,

you're going to get a cure for cancer.

You're going to have material abundance,

but you will have no freedom. You will

have no agency. It will be a perfect

surveillance state. There will be no

privacy. And that's what it you're going

to get.

You're going to get great comfort, but

you will have

there will be nothing left in the world

for you to really do. Nothing that

really matters. You'll just kind of live

at the, you know, service of the AI

giving you material wealth. Um, I'd

really like to avoid that. And I think

it's easy to accept temporary

trade-offs. So, if we say every year

freedom and agency has got to go up,

people have got to be more in control of

their time and do more of the stuff they

want. Uh, and more long-term

fulfillment, I think that'd be very

good.

Um, let me put you back into sophomore

year of uh, Stanford. You're coming to

YC. Um, if you could give yourself like

a a like a message in a bottle to that

Sam Alman, um, what would you say to him

right now?

>> Um,

I was just, it's all going to work out.

like I it was you know it feels like

such a crazy it is a crazy and a very

stressful thing to do a startup and you

know my first startup like didn't work

out great and it was like a sort of

difficult time in my life but it

one of the thing I think this many

people say this as they like look back

on the early part of their career you

can make a lot of mistakes you can fail

at stuff like the tech industry in

particular is very forgiving of this and

I would have just Like

I wish I could have like told myself to

like have all the drive and the

ambition, but just like be a little

happier along the way and trust that

like eventually it was going to be okay

because it feels so difficult and scary

and painful in the moment.

>> Well, I can't think of a better way to

end Startup School 2026. Sam Alman,

thank you so much.

>> Thanks. [cheering]