OpenAI chief Sam Altman had barely strolled into Sun Valley’s billionaire summer camp on Tuesday when he found himself peppered with questions from reporters on Mark Zuckerberg’s rivaling AI ambitions, Elon Musk’s America Party, and his thoughts on the Trump administration.
Altman, who is set to attend the annual Allen & Co. Sun Valley Conference this week, spent a couple of minutes talking to reporters before entering the conference grounds. He was first asked about the war for talent between OpenAI and social media giant Meta.
“We have, obviously an incredibly talented team, and I think they really love what they are doing. Obviously, some people will go to different places,” Altman told reporters.
“There’s a lot of excitement, I guess you could say, in the industry. But no, I think we feel fine,” he added.
Zuckerberg and Meta have been aggressively poaching AI talent from competitors like OpenAI. Last month, Meta said it had made a $15 billion investment in data-labeling firm ScaleAI. It added that ScaleAI’s founder and CEO, Alexandr Wang, will be joining Meta as its Chief AI Officer as part of the deal.
In addition, Wang will co-lead Meta Superintelligence Labs with Nat Friedman, the former CEO of GitHub. The team also includes former top researchers from OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic.
Altman told reporters on Tuesday that he has not spoken to Zuckerberg since Meta started poaching OpenAI’s employees but is “looking forward” to seeing him at the conference.
The OpenAI chief said in a podcast interview that aired last month that he found it “crazy” that Meta was dangling $100 million signing bonuses to OpenAI’s employees. Altman said then that “none of our best people have decided to take them up on that.”
Altman said on Tuesday that OpenAI’s approach toward retaining talent was to have a “great mission, really talented people, and trying to build a great research lab and a great company, too.”
Altman: Elon busts up with everybody
Besides talking about Meta and Zuckerberg, Altman was asked about his other rival, Musk.
Musk, once one of President Donald Trump’s biggest backers, has publicly fallen out with the administration after he criticized Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill.” The Tesla and SpaceX CEO has since announced the formation of a new political party, the America Party.
Altman said he knew little about Musk’s new party but wasn’t surprised by Musk’s new feud with Trump.
“Elon busts up with everybody,” Altman said on Tuesday.
Altman cofounded OpenAI with Musk in 2015, but their relationship has since deteriorated since Musk left OpenAI’s board in 2018.
Last year, Musk filed a lawsuit against OpenAI where he accused the ChatGPT maker of violating its nonprofit mission by partnering with Microsoft. He also gave Altman a nickname: “Swindly Sam.”
Altman said on Tuesday that he was happy with the Trump administration’s work on AI. In January, Trump and Altman announced Stargate, a joint venture between OpenAI, Oracle, and SoftBank. The project is expected to invest up to $500 billion in AI infrastructure across the US.
“They really care about AI infrastructure and building it out and seeing the US succeed here,” Altman said.
Representatives for Altman, Zuckerberg, Musk, and Trump did not respond to requests for comment from Business Insider.
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