OpenAI CEO and co-founder Sam Altman discusses the rollout of GPT-6 Astra, the company's latest AI model, and says the tech industry has done a terrible job of communicating the benefits of AI. Speaking with Ed Ludlow on "Bloomberg The Close," Altman also says he assumes the company will go public one day.
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What Sam Altman said
Written from the verified transcript and checked against it. Every figure links to the moment it was said.
Sam Altman discussed OpenAI's Astra model, which he described as a new step toward AGI, enabling users to build software, run simulations, and create products interactively. He explained that Astra's release was delayed to strengthen safety, including cyber safeguards after hitting 'cyber critical' under their preparedness framework. He noted that the model launching today is GPT-6, while a future model was paused. Altman emphasized the importance of monitorability and chain-of-thought monitoring, but said it's not the only safety component. He agreed with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent that the AI industry has done a poor job explaining benefits, and stressed the need to empower users with more autonomy. He highlighted Astra's token efficiency and recent 80% price cut on Luna, aiming for best price-performance. On going public, he said OpenAI is mission-first and long-term oriented.
Key takeaways
Astra is a new step toward AGI, enabling users to build software and run simulations interactively.
Astra hit 'cyber critical' under OpenAI's preparedness framework, requiring new safeguards before release.
The model launching today is GPT-6; a future model was paused due to safety concerns.
OpenAI cut Luna's price by 80% and aims for best price-performance at every intelligence level.
If OpenAI goes public, it will remain mission-first and long-term oriented.
0:33I know a lot of the development was very cybersecurity focused, but taking it away from the software engineer, what is the everyday person unlocking in AI that they weren't able to do previously?
2:02So the specifics of how Astra's being released, I think it's important that a version of it with specific guardrails—what was the thinking behind that, and what are those specific guardrails in this early release of it?
4:00What specifically was it that you saw that made you hit pause—the behavior, I suppose, of the model?
7:43What's your view of that, and whether you would, on reflection, consider OpenAI to be in that bucket?
9:58But you know, how much is that the balance of access to the technology?
11:20... that as a public company, where the sort of financial incentive and fiduciary duty of being a public company isn't necessarily the same as being committed to developing the technology, getting the technology released out into the world?
The way that OpenAI is framing Astra is basically an early step toward AGI, but I thought we could start a conversation just with basically what's fundamentally different with Astra relative to prior generations of model.
It feels, first of all, thank you for having me. It feels like a new step in this process towards models that can really help us create value, do work, discover new science, help us create help, start new companies, or create new products. Using it subjectively feels to me very different than any model before.
What's the kind of principal use case that's different this time around? You know, I think we can get into the generations of model that were very coding focused. I know a lot of the development was very cybersecurity focused, but taking it away from the software engineer, what is the everyday person unlocking in AI that they weren't able to do previously?
One thing that I think people will immediately notice is if you have an idea and you want to work interactively with an AI to get a complex piece of—a whole piece of software built, this is the first model to me where I could sort of tell someone like, just give it a try. There's a good chance it'll work. And you know, I've watched people make computer games. I watched people do sort of like home DIY electrical engineering projects. I've watched people do very complex simulations for some piece of science they're working on. Certainly a lot of the work where you would sort of normally sit down and have to build a financial model here and then a PowerPoint presentation around it, and then figure out how to make a little interactive piece of code to sort of try different simulations—that stuff is all so doable now. What I hope will happen is people—I think people will be surprised at the beginning, but then as they build up more trust in the model and more like, "Wow, I can really do this," just start throwing harder and harder tasks and more creative ideas at it, and they will find out what the model can really do for them.
So the specifics of how Astra's being released, I think it's important that a version of it with specific guardrails—what was the thinking behind that, and what are those specific guardrails in this early release of it?
Yeah. So the challenge of our industry is that we have these models that are getting incredibly capable and incredibly useful and that people want to use to everything from make their lives a little easier to starting new companies. And then, on the other hand, as these models get more capable, the risks that we have to mitigate also become more serious. The models could do more damage if we don't do a good job at that. And so we have spent—obviously this model took us a little longer to release than we were hoping. I think it'll be worth the wait, but we really wanted to spend the time on the safety and security alignment of this model. And I think as people understand the power and impact and capabilities, they will be happy that we did. We will have different tiers of cyber access for this model, for cyber in particular. Today we're rolling it out to Trusted Access Partners. And then in the coming days, assuming everything goes well, we'll roll it out more broadly. You could say, "Well, you know, if this model has a cyber problem, why let anyone use it for cyber?" And I think it's very important to note that the world is very close to a complete change in the landscape of cyber attacks, and the only way that we see for society to collectively defend itself against this coming wave of models from around the world and from other companies is to use tools like Astra to rapidly defend against these new kind of cyber threats. So we will have multiple programs for people with sort of different levels of verification and trust. But we do think it's quite important that the world use these models to collectively defend ourselves.
What happened prior to release is important, right? You determined that Astra can find and develop zero-day exploits without any human intervention, essentially. And so you paused some of the work to strengthen the safeguards. What specifically was it that you saw that made you hit pause—the behavior, I suppose, of the model?
So it's worth pointing out that the model that we're launching today is GPT-6. Astra has been done training for a while. The model that we recently talked about pausing is a future model. But with Astra, we did hit cyber critical. And that required, under our preparedness framework, a new set of safeguards just to be able to release Astra because of those cyber capabilities you talked about.
I got a lot of questions for you, Sam, about Astra and chain of thought. I don't know if that comes as a surprise to you or not, but as Astra becomes more autonomous or future generations of the model become more autonomous, can OpenAI sort of say with confidence that you see and understand what the model is planning before it acts? In other words, you have visibility into the reasoning that basically users of the model can't see, OpenAI can for obvious reasons. Could you go into that a little bit?
9 more exchanges in this transcript
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Altman, S. (2026, September 3). OpenAI's Sam Altman on Astra Model Debut, Benefits of AI [Interview transcript]. Bloomberg Television. CEOInterviews.AI. https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/1303391/
MLA
Sam Altman. "OpenAI's Sam Altman on Astra Model Debut, Benefits of AI." Bloomberg Television, 3 Sep. 2026. Transcript, CEOInterviews.AI, https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/1303391/.
BibTeX
@misc{altman2026_1303391,
author = {Sam Altman},
title = {OpenAI's Sam Altman on Astra Model Debut, Benefits of AI},
howpublished = {Interview transcript, Bloomberg Television. CEOInterviews.AI},
year = {2026},
month = {sep},
url = {https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/1303391/},
note = {Speaker-attributed transcript with timestamps}
}
