OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has openly acknowledged what many people have been thinking: artificial intelligence is in a bubble. Speaking to The Verge, he compared the current excitement around AI to the dot-com boom of the 1990s. Back then, investors poured money into the internet with huge expectations. While a lot of companies collapsed, the technology itself was very real, and the survivors reshaped the economy. Altman sees a similar story unfolding today with AI.
He did not hold back when describing the frenzy. Altman said it feels “insane” that startups with only “three people and an idea” are suddenly being valued at massive amounts. For him, this is classic bubble behavior. The risk is that some investors and companies will get burned when expectations do not match reality. Still, he believes that even with the volatility, AI will ultimately deliver more economic value than it destroys.
One of the more striking parts of the interview was Altman’s claim that OpenAI expects to spend trillions of dollars on data centers in the future. That figure sounds unbelievable, but Altman argues that building enough infrastructure to power increasingly advanced AI systems will demand unprecedented investment. In his words, OpenAI is committed to spending whatever is necessary to keep scaling.
Altman also shared a bold vision of where this technology is heading. In a separate Wired interview, he suggested that ChatGPT could eventually out-talk humanity itself, generating more conversations each day than human beings do on their own. He predicted billions of daily users, with the model becoming deeply integrated into everyday communication.
Of course, not everything has been smooth for OpenAI. The company’s launch of GPT-5 faced backlash from users and raised questions about whether the company is moving too fast. Altman admitted the rollout could have been handled better but insisted that the long-term potential far outweighs the bumps along the way.
So what does this all mean for the future of AI? On the one hand, there is undeniable hype, unrealistic valuations, and a bubble that will almost certainly pop for some companies. On the other hand, Altman is betting that AI is here to stay and will eventually reshape entire industries, just as the internet did after the dot-com crash. The bubble might burst for certain players, but the underlying technology will continue to grow in power and influence.
