Sam Altman on how he thinks about OpenAI competitors

January 09, 2025

“I won’t say we totally ignore competitors. I think everybody pays a little bit of attention and there’s some value. It can give you some inspiration. But… I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about it. We’re just trying to figure out the next paradigm and the next great idea. If other people want to chase to where we are right now, I don’t think that’s going to be a great strategy.”

Sam continues:

“Once you know that something is possible and roughly how to do it, it always gets copied quickly. That’s not the hard part. The hard part is figuring out what it is and doing it first when you don’t know it’s possible. So we’ll keep doing that, and other people will keep copying where we’ve been.”

OpenAI controversy aside, I think this is genuinely good advice for any founder worrying about competitors copying their idea. If your competitors can copy you, you probably need to set more ambitious goals.

Perhaps Elon Musk put it best when he said:

“Patents are for the weak… They don’t actually help advance things. They just stop others from following you.”