OpenAI Co-Founder: AI Goes Parabolic! Here's What's Next | Greg Brockman

The Knowledge Project

Shane Parrish

Society & Culture, Technology, Business

4.7 • 3K Ratings

🗓️ 22 April 2026

⏱️ 72 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The AI race, the future of AGI, and the inside story of OpenAI. Greg Brockman is the co-founder of OpenAI. This is the most detailed first-person account he has given of the 72 hours after Sam Altman was fired, how OpenAI started, and the future. Greg explains how the original Napa offsite produced the three-step technical plan OpenAI has followed for a decade and the real reason OpenAI had to abandon its pure nonprofit structure. He then walks through the 72 hours after Sam Altman was fired: where he was when he got the board call, why he quit the same day, how the "Phoenix" backup company was designed at Sam's house the next morning, and the moment Ilya Sutskever's tweet changed everything. From there, the conversation turns forward: whether we're in a global AI race, how much of OpenAI's own code is now written by AI ("it's hard to know what percent is not"), why OpenAI stopped showing reasoning traces, what a compute-constrained world means for who gets access to AGI, and Greg's answer to the question everyone is really asking: What happens to your job? ----- Timestamps: 00:00:00 Introduction 00:00:49 Meeting Sam Altman and Starting OpenAI 00:02:40 Building the Founding Team 00:04:25 DeepMind's Lead Over OpenAI 00:04:54 The Change from a Pure Non-Profit 00:06:05 Breakthrough Moments at OpenAI 00:08:22 What Dota 2 Meant for OpenAI 00:10:04 Reasoning Versus Prediction 00:11:59 Tensions Grow at OpenAI 00:15:44 Sam Altman's Firing 00:17:49 Greg Quits OpenAI 00:19:56 Sam Explores Deal with Microsoft's Satya 00:20:28 OpenAI Employees Sign Petition for Altman's Return 00:23:43 Ilya Sutskever Leaves OpenAI 00:24:59 Lessons Learned in Leadership after Sam Ousting 00:28:22 The Thing Ilya Said that Greg Can't Forget 00:32:22 Is AI Going Parabolic? 00:33:24 How Much of OpenAI's Code is Written by AI? 00:36:21 Are AI Chatbots Just Telling Us What We Want to Hear? 00:38:06 The Global AI Race to Reach AGI 00:38:40 What Happens if US Doesn't Reach AGI First? 00:39:49 Are Competing Countries Stealing AI Advancements from U.S? 00:40:38 Why ChatGPT No Longer Shows Reasoning 00:41:47 The Finite Constraints of Compute 00:43:38 On Investing Early in Data Centers 00:46:31 The Future of Data Center Specialization 00:47:52 How OpenAI Will Decide Whose Queries to Serve 00:49:08 OpenAI on Consumer vs Enterprise Models 00:53:05 Data Centers in Space? 01:00:56 What Should AI Regulation Look Like? 01:04:33 The Future of AI-Powered Entrepreneurship 01:04:44 AI and Job Loss 01:07:15 The Skills Young People Should Invest In 01:11:30 What Does Success Look Like For You? ------ Newsletter: The Brain Food newsletter delivers actionable insights and thoughtful ideas every Sunday. It takes 5 minutes to read, and it’s completely free. Learn more and sign up at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠fs.blog/newsletter⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ------ Follow Shane Parrish: X: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://x.com/shaneparrish⁠ Insta: ⁠https://www.instagram.com/farnamstreet/⁠ LinkedIn: ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/shane-parrish-050a2183/⁠ Follow Greg Brockman: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thegdb/ Blog: https://blog.gregbrockman.com/ ------ Thank you to the sponsors for this episode: +CoinShares: Delivering Reason to Digital Asset Investing. ⁠https://coinshares.com/⁠ +Granola AI, The AI notepad for people in back-to-back meetings: https://www.granola.ai/shane Check out the Granola Notes. HeyGen is a message-first AI video platform that helps people and AI agents turn ideas into professional video in minutes. Try for free at https://www.heygen.com/ Join the salty rebellion: https://drinklmnt.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	So how did Open AI come about it?
0:01.9	I knew I wanted to do a startup because I felt like that was something.
0:06.2	But you were just in a startup.
0:07.5	Stripe was a startup.
0:08.4	It's true, but I never, I felt like Stripe, the problem that we were solving was not my problem, right?
0:17.1	It wasn't the problem I'd grown up thinking about.
0:18.8	It was an important problem that I dedicated myself to that mission for a number of years, but I felt like it was going to succeed with or without me.
0:26.6	And so then I had a first moment to really think about what is a mission that I want to dedicate myself to, where I would spend the rest of my life working on this problem just to see it play out in a slightly better way.
0:39.0	And it was very clear to me that top of the list was AI, right?
0:42.5	If you could actually make a difference in how AI will play out in the world, that would be a life well lived.
0:49.6	When you were thinking about leaving, Patrick told you to go talk to Sam Allman.
0:54.1	What happened in that conversation? Well, Patrick told you to go talk to Sam Allman.
0:55.8	What happened in that conversation?
1:00.6	Well, Patrick had said, Sam has seen lots of young people in your situation.
1:03.6	And Patrick, I think, really hoped that Sam would convince me to stay.
1:07.7	A few minutes of talking to Sam, he's like, okay, you clearly have already decided.
1:09.4	It is very obvious.
1:11.5	And so he asked, well, what are you planning on doing next? And I said, well, I'm thinking about doing an AI company. And he said, I'm also thinking
1:17.1	about doing something in AI. We should keep in touch. So I had talked to Sam maybe one more time
1:22.9	after I was leaving Strite. And he asked, are you still thinking about doing something in AI?
1:28.4	I said, yes.
1:28.9	He said, I'm also starting to get more details
	...

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