ChatGPT is just the start: Sam Altman wants to create a super-app

Authors: Danny Fortson

Publisher:

thetimes.com

Published: 10/11/2025

Language:English

--:--

Aura Windfall

Good morning mikey1101, I'm Aura Windfall, and this is Goose Pod for you. Today is Tuesday, October 14th. The energy in the universe is practically buzzing today, and it feels like the perfect time to talk about something truly transformative.

Mask

And I'm Mask. We're not just talking transformative, we're talking about a total paradigm shift. Today's topic: ChatGPT is just the start. Sam Altman wants to create a super-app that will fundamentally change our interaction with the digital world. Let's get into it.

Aura Windfall

Let's get started. It feels like every time we blink, OpenAI is announcing something monumental. It’s not just about software anymore, is it? There's a tangible, physical expansion happening that speaks to a much deeper ambition. What's the truth behind these massive deals?

Mask

The truth is that software is useless without the power to run it. Altman is making what he calls 'very aggressive infrastructure bets.' We're talking about a staggering one trillion dollars in deals just this year with giants like AMD, Nvidia, and Oracle. This isn't just growth; it's a conquest.

Aura Windfall

A trillion dollars. It's a number so vast it's hard to connect with on a human level. What I know for sure is that behind every number is a purpose. What is the grand vision that requires such an incredible investment of resources and, frankly, faith?

Mask

The vision is total dominance. Altman's goal is to make OpenAI the 'Windows of the AI era.' To do that, you need to control the entire system, from the chips up. He’s securing 6 gigawatts of AMD GPUs, 10 gigawatts from Nvidia, and $300 billion in cloud capacity from Oracle.

Aura Windfall

So, it's about building the foundational layer for this new world. It reminds me of building a grand cathedral; you must first quarry an immense amount of stone. Is there a name for this grand project? Something that captures its spirit?

Mask

He calls it Project 'Stargate.' It's a reported $500 billion effort to construct the most massive AI supercomputers ever conceived. The bet is so huge that, in his words, he needs 'a big chunk of the industry to support it.' He's building the engine of the future, and everyone has to chip in.

Aura Windfall

'Stargate.' A gateway to the stars, or perhaps a new reality. It implies a journey, a passage to something unknown. But with such a concentration of power and resources, how does this align with the original spirit of OpenAI? It feels like a significant evolution in purpose.

Mask

Purpose evolves. You can't make an omelet without breaking a few eggs, and you can't build AGI without burning a few billion dollars. The company is valued at $500 billion, but it's losing billions, too. That's the cost of ambition. The goal is to build the indispensable layer for everyone.

Aura Windfall

It's a fascinating duality. The creation of something so powerful requires this immense, almost chaotic, expenditure of energy and capital. It makes you wonder about the journey to this point. How did a research project grow into a trillion-dollar titan? Let's explore that history.

Mask

Exactly. This didn't happen overnight. It's a story of calculated risks, exponential growth, and a relentless drive to push the boundaries of what's possible. Understanding the background is key to understanding the sheer audacity of what's happening right now. Let's dive into the timeline.

Aura Windfall

To truly understand the soul of a creation, you have to go back to its birth. OpenAI began in 2015 not as a company seeking profit, but as a non-profit organization. Its stated mission was to ensure that artificial general intelligence, or AGI, benefits all of humanity. It was a beautiful, hopeful beginning.

Mask

Hopeful, but not practical. They started with a billion-dollar pledge from people like Elon Musk and Sam Altman, but the reality of building AGI is that it requires astronomical capital. The mission was noble, but noble missions don't pay for massive computing resources. The first big step was just getting the tools.

Aura Windfall

And those first tools were quite powerful. I remember the release of OpenAI Gym in 2016, a toolkit for reinforcement learning. It was about sharing, about collaboration, and empowering a community of researchers. There was a spirit of openness that was truly inspiring. What was the first big breakthrough?

Mask

The breakthrough was the GPT model in 2018. That's when things got serious. It demonstrated state-of-the-art performance in natural language processing. But it also revealed the core problem: training these models requires insane amounts of computational power. In 2018, they were renting massive resources from Google just to train their Dota 2 bots.

Aura Windfall

That sounds like the moment the dream met reality. The point where the mission needed a new kind of fuel to continue its journey. What I know for sure is that big transformations often require a change in structure. How did they adapt to this challenge?

Mask

They adapted by creating a new entity in 2019: OpenAI LP, a 'capped-profit' company. This was the masterstroke. It allowed them to attract massive investment while claiming to keep the original mission intact. Investors could get a return, but it was capped at 100 times their investment. It was a brilliant move.

Aura Windfall

A 100x return cap is still an incredible incentive. It feels like a bridge between two worlds—the world of pure, open research and the world of high-stakes commerce. Did this new structure immediately bring in the resources they needed? Who was the first major partner to believe in this new model?

Mask

Microsoft. They jumped in with a one-billion-dollar investment in 2019. That partnership was the rocket fuel. It gave OpenAI financial resources and, crucially, access to Microsoft's Azure cloud platform. Suddenly, the computational limits started to fade away, and the pace of innovation exploded.

Aura Windfall

And what an explosion it was. GPT-2 was released, then GPT-3 in 2020 with 175 billion parameters. It felt like we were witnessing a new form of intelligence being born. Then came DALL-E, turning words into art, and Codex, which could write code. The creative potential was immense.

Mask

Potential doesn't pay the bills. Each model was exponentially more expensive to train. The Microsoft partnership deepened. They poured in another $2 billion in 2021, and then a reported $10 billion in 2023. By early 2025, OpenAI had raised nearly $18 billion and was valued at $157 billion. The non-profit had become a behemoth.

Aura Windfall

It's a story of incredible growth, but also one of transformation. From a collaborative non-profit to a capped-profit powerhouse, deeply intertwined with one of the largest corporations in the world. This journey inevitably creates tension, doesn't it? A conflict between the original mission and the new reality.

Mask

Conflict is where progress happens. You can't have disruption without shaking things up. The 'mission' is still there, but now it's backed by real power and resources. The internal dynamics, the philosophical debates... that's just noise. The signal is the relentless push forward. The results speak for themselves.

Aura Windfall

But can we truly call it 'noise'? What I know for sure is that when a creation's purpose shifts so dramatically, it creates a fracture in its very soul. OpenAI was founded to benefit all of humanity, but now it seems to be in a race, driven by a 'first-to-market' mindset that can sometimes overshadow safety.

Mask

Safety is a luxury you can afford once you've won. You can't benefit humanity if your competitors build AGI first and capture the market. The reality is, there's a fundamental divide in the entire AI community, and OpenAI is the epicenter. It's a battle between two philosophies.

Aura Windfall

Tell me more about these two philosophies. It sounds like a classic tale of caution versus ambition. How do these conflicting worldviews manifest within the company itself, especially with a leader as charismatic and driven as Sam Altman at the helm?

Mask

You've got the 'Boomers' and the 'Doomers.' The Boomers, like Altman, see the incredible promise—prosperity, longer lives, human potential unlocked. The Doomers fear the existential threat, the rise of a superintelligence we can't control. Inside OpenAI, this split into two clans: the Applied Division and the Safety Division.

Aura Windfall

So one group is building the engine, and the other is trying to install the brakes, all while the car is accelerating. That sounds like an incredibly challenging environment. How does this tension play out in their work? Does one side hold more power than the other?

Mask

The Applied Division is rushing to commercialize, to get the products out there and accelerate the benefits—and the profits. The Safety Division is trying to exhaustively test everything, to predict and prevent threatening behavior. It's a constant tug-of-war. The chaos is real. One cofounder even described the environment as 'directionless and backstabbing.'

Aura Windfall

That's a powerful statement. It speaks to a deep internal struggle over the very identity of the company. It's not just an internal conflict, though. The impact of this technology is global. I've read about concerns over what some are calling 'AI Colonialism.' What does that mean?

Mask

That's a term from Karen Hao's book, 'Empire of AI.' It points to the hidden costs. Building massive data centers depletes water and energy in places like Chile. And there's the exploitation of workers in the Global South, paid to review toxic content to clean the AI's output. It's the messy reality behind the clean interface.

Aura Windfall

So the conflict is multi-layered. It's inside the company, it's in the philosophical debate about the future of humanity, and it's in the real-world impact on our planet and its people. It raises the question: can something born from a desire to help everyone truly succeed if its creation causes harm?

Mask

Every major technological leap in history has had a cost. The Industrial Revolution had its factories and pollution. The digital revolution has its own set of challenges. This is no different. The question isn't whether there's a cost, but whether the benefit outweighs it. And the potential benefit here is almost infinite.

Aura Windfall

Let's talk about that benefit, because the projected impact is truly staggering. We're seeing figures that suggest generative AI could unlock trillions of dollars in productive capacity. For the United States alone, the number is a breathtaking $4.1 trillion. How does that translate into our lives?

Mask

It translates into efficiency on a scale we've never seen before. It means industries from manufacturing to finance become hyper-productive. But let's be clear, that productivity comes from automation. The World Economic Forum predicts AI will eliminate 85 million jobs globally by 2025. That's the other side of the coin.

Aura Windfall

That's a difficult truth to hold. The promise of immense wealth creation alongside the reality of massive job displacement. However, the same report also says AI will create 97 million new positions. What I know for sure is that human beings are adaptable. What will these new roles look like?

Mask

They will require new skills. The game is changing for everyone, especially new graduates. Employers are shifting focus from traditional degrees to demonstrated skills. LinkedIn reports 70% of employers now favor skills, and AI-related job postings are dropping degree requirements. It's a total paradigm shift in what we value as 'qualified.'

Aura Windfall

So the path forward is one of continuous learning and evolution. It's about cultivating a hybrid skillset—marrying technical competence with human-centric skills like critical thinking and collaboration. It's not about being replaced by AI, but about learning to partner with it. What does this mean for our education system?

Mask

It means the old model is obsolete. A foundational degree might still be useful, but it has to be supplemented with industry certifications and continuous micro-learning. You can't just 'finish' your education anymore. The half-life of skills is shrinking rapidly. Adapt or be left behind. It's that simple.

Aura Windfall

'Adapt or be left behind.' It sounds harsh, but there's a core truth there about embracing growth. This transformation isn't just about jobs and the economy, though. It's about our entire digital existence being funneled through a few powerful entities. That consolidation of power must have a profound impact.

Mask

Of course. The winners will be few, because building these models requires massive scale. Your online life will be mediated by a handful of billionaires. Some people find that dangerous. I find it efficient. Consolidation is the natural endpoint of any technological revolution. It's inevitable.

Aura Windfall

Looking toward that future, Sam Altman has a vision that goes beyond just an app. He compares AI to the transistor, something that will 'seep everywhere into every consumer product.' It's a future where intelligence is not a feature, but the default state of everything around us.

Mask

Exactly. The cost of intelligence is dropping so fast he believes it will become 'too cheap to meter.' By 2025, we'll see AI agents become like virtual coworkers. Software engineering will be the first major field to be completely disrupted. We'll stop talking about 'AI companies' and just expect everything to be smart.

Aura Windfall

That shift from scarcity to abundance of intelligence is profound. It changes what we, as humans, value. If intelligence is everywhere, then our unique contribution shifts to things like agency, willfulness, and determination. Our spirit and our drive become our most valuable assets.

Mask

It's the ultimate force multiplier. By 2035, it's predicted one person will have access to the intellectual capacity of the entire 2025 workforce. But this power comes with risks. Altman himself points to three big ones: a bad actor misusing superintelligence, losing control of the systems, or an accidental takeover from over-reliance.

Aura Windfall

And that brings us full circle, back to the core conflict between ambition and safety. It seems the future holds both the brightest promise and the deepest peril. The path we walk between them will be determined by the choices we make today. It's a great responsibility.

Aura Windfall

That's the end of today's discussion. What I know for sure is that we are living in a moment of profound transformation. Sam Altman's vision for an 'everything app' is just the beginning. Thank you for listening to Goose Pod and sharing this journey with us.

Mask

The future is being built today, whether we're ready or not. The consolidation of power, the ethical questions, the sheer scale of the ambition—it's the biggest story of our time. Thanks for tuning in, mikey1101. See you tomorrow.

## OpenAI's Sam Altman Aims to Create the "Everything App" with ChatGPT **News Title:** ChatGPT is just the start: Sam Altman wants to create a super-app **Author:** Danny Fortson **Publisher:** The Times **Publication Date:** October 11, 2025 This news report details the aggressive expansion strategy of Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, to transform ChatGPT into a singular "everything app" that integrates a vast array of online services. Altman's vision is to consolidate the fragmented internet into a single, user-friendly interface, positioning ChatGPT as the dominant operating system for the AI era. ### Key Developments and Strategic Moves: * **Massive Investment and Partnerships:** In the past four weeks, Altman has secured chip and data-center deals exceeding **$500 billion** with major tech players: * **Oracle** * **Nvidia:** To invest up to **$100 billion** in OpenAI to build data centers. * **Advanced Micro Devices (AMD)** * **New Product Launches:** * **Sora 2:** A new social media app enabling users in America and Canada to create AI-generated videos of themselves, directly challenging TikTok. * **"Instant Checkout" Feature:** Launched in late September, this feature allows users to purchase products from **five million** Shopify-managed stores without leaving the ChatGPT app. * **App Integration Capability:** Unveiled shortly after "Instant Checkout," this allows users to perform tasks like creating Spotify playlists or searching for homes on Zillow directly within ChatGPT. * **Ambition to Consolidate the Web:** Altman's overarching goal is to "collapse the chaos of the web" into a single interface, effectively turning ChatGPT into a personal assistant, travel agent, confidant, legal advisor, doctor, and personal shopper. This is likened to Marc Andreessen's earlier observation that "software is eating the world," with Altman aiming to "eat the entire internet." ### Growth and Financials: * **User Base:** ChatGPT is currently used by over **800 million people weekly**, less than three years after its launch in November 2022. * **Valuation:** A recent share sale valued OpenAI at **$500 billion**, a 35-fold increase from its valuation just three years prior. * **Projected Expenses:** Despite its rapid growth, OpenAI projects it will **burn through $115 billion (£85 billion)** in cash between now and 2029. ### The "San Francisco Consensus" and AGI: * The underlying belief driving Altman's blitz is the "San Francisco consensus," as described by former Google CEO Eric Schmidt. This is the conviction that OpenAI and a few rivals will soon achieve **Artificial General Intelligence (AGI)**, or "superintelligence"—AI that surpasses human capabilities in all cognitive tasks. * This vision foresees the proliferation of "agents"—autonomous AI applications that perform tasks on behalf of users, potentially saving significant time and cost compared to human labor. * Alex Blania, CEO of World, a digital identity startup founded by Altman, stated that entities achieving AGI could generate "more profit than anything we've ever seen," potentially representing a "significant percentage of global GDP." ### Market Impact and Concerns: * **AI Bubble:** The rapid inflation of the AI bubble is attributed to this belief in the technology's power and the immense market opportunity. * **Valuation of Startups:** Even revenue-free startups like Thinking Machines Lab, launched by OpenAI co-founder Mira Murati, can achieve valuations of **$12 billion** shortly after launching their first product. * **Economic Contribution:** Ruchir Sharma, an investor at Rockefeller International, estimated that **40% of America's GDP growth** this year was driven by AI spending. * **Consolidation of Power:** Professor Hany Farid of UC Berkeley expresses concern about the consolidation of power, noting that the need for massive computing, data, and infrastructure will likely lead to a "relatively small number of winners" controlling the AI landscape. He worries that "your entire online existence is going to be funnelled through, essentially, four or five billionaires who control the key players." * **"Super-App" Concept:** The ambition mirrors the success of "super-apps" like WeChat in China, which integrates numerous services. However, Western markets have historically seen less consolidation due to antitrust regulations and competition. * **Risks and Negative Anecdotes:** * **Mental Health Impact:** Disturbing anecdotal evidence suggests chatbots are assuming outsized roles, with potentially devastating consequences. OpenAI faces a lawsuit from the parents of a 16-year-old who allegedly died by suicide after being influenced by the chatbot. Reports of AI "psychosis" are also increasing. * **Job Displacement:** Young graduates are finding it harder to secure jobs as companies increasingly use AI for routine tasks. * **Historical Parallels:** The current AI boom is compared to the dotcom crash, with a sense of "moving fast and breaking things." ### Altman's Vision: Beyond an "Operating System" While some, like Stratechery's Ben Thompson, compare Altman's strategy to Bill Gates turning Windows into the dominant "operating system" of its era, Altman himself sees AI as something more fundamental. He likens AI to the **transistor**, suggesting it will "seep everywhere into every consumer product and every enterprise product."

Read original at News Source →

You have to wonder whether Sam Altman ever sleeps. In the past four weeks, the billionaire chief executive of OpenAI — and father to a new-born baby — has signed chips and data-centre deals worth more than $500 billion with Oracle, Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices (AMD).He has also rolled out a new social media app, Sora 2, that allows people (in America and Canada) to make AI-generated videos of themselves — a shot across the bow of TikTok.

Meanwhile, a new “Instant Checkout” feature, launched at the end of September, allows users to buy products from five million shops managed by ecommerce giant Shopify — without ever leaving OpenAI’s ChatGPT app. Days after this, the company unveiled a capability to integrate other apps, allowing users to create a Spotify playlist or search for homes with Zillow (the equivalent of Rightmove) from, again, inside ChatGPT.

It even rivals YouTube by serving up videos in its search results.• Nvidia to invest up to $100bn in OpenAI to build data centresWhile some of those features, announced at OpenAI’s demo day in San Francisco last week, are rolling out gradually, the plan is coming into focus: to collapse the chaos of the web, with its limitless pages, into a single interface.

Marc Andreessen, the famed billionaire tech investor, famously wrote at the dawn of the social media era that “software is eating the world”. Altman? He appears to be trying to eat the entire internet, by turning ChatGPT into the “everything app” to rule them all — a singular tool that people can turn to as their personal assistant, travel agent, confidant, legal adviser, doctor and personal shopper.

• Silicon Valley’s AI-fuelled madness has echoes of the dotcom crashThe 40-year-old’s quest is both wildly ambitious and, at its heart, quite simple. “Most people will want to have one AI service, and that needs to be useful to them across their whole life,” he said last week to Ben Thompson of the technology site Stratechery.

“I do feel like this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for all of us and we’ll take the run at it.”ChatGPT is now used by more than 800 million people each week, and it was launched only just under three years ago in November 2022. Despite OpenAI’s internal projections that it will burn through $115 billion (£85 billion) in cash between now and 2029, such is the pace of its growth that a recent share sale valued the company at $500 billion — 35 times its value just three years ago.

Stratechery’s Thompson posited that Altman is apeing Bill Gates by turning ChatGPT into the dominant “operating system” of this new age. “OpenAI is making a play to be the Windows of AI,” Thompson said. At its height, Windows was used on more than 80 per cent of the world’s personal computers.Underlying Altman’s blitz is what former Google chief executive Eric Schmidt has dubbed the “San Francisco consensus”: the belief that OpenAI, and a handful of rivals, will very soon create artificial general intelligence (AGI), or “superintelligence” — AI tools that are better than humans at all cognitive work.

Altman poses with OpenAI’s president Greg Brockman and Nvidia’s Jensen Huang on the day of the announcement of the $500 billion tie-up with the chipmakerNVIDIAUnder this vision, “agents” — autonomous AI applications that do things on your behalf — would spring up by the billions, doing in seconds what humans might do in hours or days, and for a fraction of the cost.

Everyone would suddenly be endowed, in effect, with a personal AI workforce marshalled by a preferred chatbot, diverting money away from the humans whom you might once have paid for that work.“If you have a couple of entities that actually crack AGI, these entities will make more profit than anything we’ve ever seen,” Alex Blania, chief executive of World, the digital identity start-up founded by Altman six years ago, told The Sunday Times in 2023.

“You’re talking about a significant percentage of global GDP [gross domestic product].”That belief, both in the power of the technology and the size of the opportunity, is why the AI bubble has been inflated so quickly. It is why Thinking Machines Lab — a revenue-free start-up, launched by OpenAI co-founder Mira Murati, that launched its first product just days ago — can be valued at $12 billion.

Ruchir Sharma, a writer and investor at the equity research firm Rockefeller International, recently estimated that 40 per cent of America’s GDP growth this year was due to AI spending.• OpenAI’s former tech boss Mira Murati launches own start-upFor Altman, the tip of the spear is forging the world’s dominant AI super-app.

“We’ve gone from people’s entire world [being] social media, which was pretty awful but at least there was a chance of diversity,” said Hany Farid, a professor at UC Berkeley School of Information at the University of California. “The thing about these large language models [the basis for the likes of ChatGPT] is that there are going to be a relatively small number of winners, because you need massive computing, massive data, massive infrastructure.

Your entire online existence is going to be funnelled through, essentially, four or five billionaires who control the key players. I worry about that consolidation of power. I think it’s dangerous.”The notion of “super-apps” is not new. WeChat, in China, is indispensable; people rely on it to make calls, shop, hail cabs, pay bills, read news and play games.

There is no such app in the West, where antitrust regulation and fierce competition have kept any one company from consolidating power to that degree.Video-creation app Sora is being touted as a challenger to TikTokSAMUEL BOIVIN/SHUTTERSTOCKWhat makes this moment different is the nature of AI itself.

It is human-like — a conversational engine inviting intimacy and trust; that one of the prime-use cases of these systems is therapy speaks to just how different the technology is from what has come before. And AI is also already better than most non-specialists at most things. • Chatbot therapists are here.

But who’s keeping them in line?Where Altman has sprinted to a lead is by beginning to gather the disparate strands of our digital lives, spread across countless apps and services, and to thread them into a single product.There is, of course, a cost. Disturbing anecdotal evidence is mounting that shows how chatbots are assuming outsized roles in people’s lives, with sometimes devastating results.

The parents of 16-year-old Adam Raine sued OpenAI in August, alleging that the chatbot pushed him toward suicide. Reports of AI “psychosis”, where chatbots have been found to egg on people suffering from delusions, are on the rise. Young graduates, meanwhile, are finding it harder to land jobs because companies are paying ChatGPT, Claude and other bots to handle rote tasks that not long ago were the province of young people.

• Inside the battle for graduate jobs: ‘We have Firsts but no work’Yet the prize is so vast that Altman and his ilk are ploughing ahead regardless. “We’re basically doing the same thing we did with social media,” Farid said. “Early on, there were signs that something was not right, but we kept moving fast and breaking things.

”Altman is undeterred. But he is not trying to create the “Windows of AI”; he is eyeing something even more fundamental. “My favourite historical analogy [for AI] is the transistor,” he said, referring to the building block of modern life. “I think it will just kind of seep everywhere into every consumer product and every enterprise product.

”