Sam Altman Signals OpenAI’s Alignment With Government as AI Rivalry Intensifies

Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, made clear this week that he believes governments — not technology companies — should ultimately hold the upper hand in the emerging artificial intelligence era.

Speaking at the Morgan Stanley Technology, Media & Telecom Conference, Altman said that “government is supposed to be more powerful than private companies,” warning that it would be “bad for society” if technology firms began abandoning democratic institutions simply because they disagreed with political leadership.

The comments came amid a rapidly escalating dispute between the U.S. Department of Defense and OpenAI rival Anthropic, which has clashed with defense officials over restrictions placed on how its AI models can be used.

Those tensions reached a breaking point last week when Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth labeled Anthropic a “supply chain risk to national security,” prompting a directive from Donald Trump ordering federal agencies to cease using the company’s technology.

Just hours after the blacklist announcement, OpenAI revealed that it had reached its own agreement with the Defense Department.

The timing drew criticism from observers who said the move appeared opportunistic, though Altman later acknowledged the optics were “sloppy” and said the company’s goal was to help stabilize a deteriorating situation.

The episode underscores how quickly AI development is becoming intertwined with geopolitics and national security. OpenAI, which began as a nonprofit research organization in 2015, has transformed into one of the fastest-growing commercial technology companies in the world following the release of ChatGPT in 2022.

The company now serves more than 900 million weekly users and recently announced a $110 billion funding round that values the firm at roughly $730 billion.

Competition across the AI sector is intensifying as companies race to capture both consumer adoption and enterprise deployments. OpenAI’s annual revenue run rate has reportedly surpassed $25 billion, while Anthropic is approaching $19 billion, illustrating just how quickly the AI economy is expanding.

Altman’s remarks suggest that as the technology becomes more powerful, the companies building it will increasingly need to navigate a delicate balance between commercial competition and government oversight.

In an industry defined by rapid innovation and enormous capital flows, the relationship between AI developers and the state may ultimately shape how the technology evolves — and who controls it.

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