Sam Altman Backs Donald Trump, Shares Hopes for US Presidency

• OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has shared his support for President-elect Donald Trump.
• Altman, a previous critic of Trump, donated $1 million to his inauguration.
• The OpenAI CEO said he “deeply” agrees with Trump that overregulation makes it difficult to build new infrastructure.

Sam Altman has become the latest tech leader to get behind President-elect Donald Trump ahead of his inauguration this month.

The OpenAI CEO, who donated $1 million to the inauguration, has said he “deeply” agrees with Trump’s views on how current regulation makes it hard to build new infrastructure in the U.S.

Under Trump, Altman hopes that the U.S. will become a leader in AI—something he feels was not adequately achieved under Joe Biden.

Altman and Trump

In an interview  with Bloomberg, Altman shared his hopes for the future of the U.S. and its AI capabilities under Trump’s new leadership.

“The thing I really deeply agree with the president on is, it is wild how difficult it has become to build things in the U.S.,” Altman told the publication. “Power plants, data centers, any of that kind of stuff.”

The OpenAI CEO said he understood how “bureaucratic cruft” builds up but claimed it was not helpful to the country, especially when considering how America needs to lead in AI.

Talking to Fox Business on Dec. 1, Altman said  he believed Trump would be “very good” at getting new AI infrastructure built in the U.S.

“Infrastructure in the U.S is super important,” he said. “AI is a little bit different than other kinds of software in that it requires massive amounts of infrastructure: power, computer chips, data centers.”

“We need to build that here, and we need to have the best AI infrastructure in the world to be able to lead with the technology and the capabilities.”

CHIPS Act Regret

For the past year, Altman has shared his ambitions to raise trillions of dollars to address the world’s chip shortage.

In February, the Wall Street Journal reported  that Altman was in talks with investors, including the United Arab Emirates government, to raise funds for a project to boost global chip manufacturing capacity.

The Biden Administration deployed the CHIPS Act in 2022 to strengthen America’s domestic semiconductor industry.

The act allocated approximately $52 billion in federal funding, with a significant portion dedicated to designated subsidies to encourage companies to build manufacturing hubs in the country.

Altman, who previously backed the act, told Bloomberg it was “better than doing nothing but not the thing that we should have done.”

“I don’t think the CHIPS Act has been as effective as any of us hoped,” he said.

The OpenAI CEO said there was a “real opportunity to do something much better as a follow-on” under Trump’s new leadership.

Trump to Champion AI

Altman previously claimed that Trump would lead the U.S. into “the age of AI” and was “eager to support his efforts to ensure America stays ahead.”

However, the OpenAI CEO said he would support “any president” and that supporting the inauguration was a “relatively small thing.”

“I don’t view that as a big decision either way. But I do think we all should wish for the president’s success.”

Altman’s support for Trump is tamer than that of others in the industry, especially when compared to Elon Musk, Big Tech’s most prominent Trump ally.

The Tesla and SpaceX CEO was one of Trump’s most prominent campaign backers before his victory against Kamala Harris.