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Sam Altman: 'You Can Make a Whole Startup by Yourself in a Room With a Lot of AI Tokens' — and You Don't Need Anyone to Take You Seriously
In an August 12 interview, Altman said he was 'peer pressured and kind of tricked into' a Goldman Sachs internship and that working at such institutions means being around 'people [who] put too much effort into trying to get taken seriously,' contrasting it with solo AI-native building. The remarks land alongside concrete OpenAI numbers: a just-closed $7 billion share sale, a potential trillion-dollar IPO as soon as H2 2026, and a plan to reach 8,000 employees by year end. The irony builders will notice: OpenAI has itself recruited 100+ former Goldman, JPMorgan and Morgan Stanley bankers to build financial-domain models.
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