September 29, 2026
WHEN: Today, Tuesday, September 29, 2026
WHERE: CNBC’s “Halftime Report”
Following is the unofficial transcript of a CNBC interview with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman on CNBC’s “Halftime Report” (M-F, 12PM-1PM ET) today, Tuesday, September 29, live from OpenAI DevDay 2026. Following are links to video on CNBC.com: https://www.cnbc.com/video/2026/09/29/openais-sam-altman-on-new-models-safety-has-to-stay-ahead-of-capabilities.html and https://www.cnbc.com/video/2026/09/29/sam-altman-on-nvidias-new-ai-guardrails-i-dont-think-its-a-full-solution.html.
All references must be sourced to CNBC.
SCOTT WAPNER: The moment is here. Sam Altman is live with our Kate Rooney. Kate, take it away.
KATE ROONEY: Hey, Scott. Thank you so much. And, Sam, it's great to see you. Thank you so much for having us here at Developer Day.
SAM ALTMAN: Thank you for coming to it.
ROONEY: It's nice to have an event in San Francisco for once.
ALTMAN: I love San Francisco.
ROONEY: Yes. Well, no, it's a busy event. We've had people lining up to get in, and there's a lot to talk about. I do want to start on the AI safety debate. There is a ton to talk about, but the latest headline that we have confirmed is that OpenAI essentially abandoned plans to launch a new model because of safety concerns. If you could walk us through that, but also what has changed?
ALTMAN: Yes.
ROONEY: Why do that? And is this different than what you've done in previous models?
ALTMAN: AI has to be built for people. It has to be, like, good for people. Part of that is, it has to be safe. It has to be always under human control, has to do what people want. And you want to be able to use it and be confident that nothing bad is going to happen. As the models have gotten more capable, the safety cases that we now use have to be held to a higher and higher standard, and the models can do more. So we will have many great new models to come, but what we have said is that alignment, safety, monitoring, security have to stay way ahead of capabilities. And we have had models in the past where we say, this is not quite at the bar we want, and we will make another one and fix it and launch it later. But there's clearly more attention on this now.
ROONEY: OK, what about this particular model worried you or freaked you out, to the point where you wouldn't launch it?
ALTMAN: I wouldn't over-rotate on this one thing. It was this model, was a little bit worse on a few of the evals we look at. This was – think of this in the abundance of caution category.
ROONEY: OK.
ALTMAN: There's not a big scary thing in this case.
ROONEY: Does this count as a pause? And I wonder what the President would say in a moment like this. If he is concerned about slowing down too much, what have your conversations been like? And do you worry that he looks at a headline like this and says, this counts as a pause here?
ALTMAN: Again, I would put this in like the normal course category of, you know, often we build a model, we test it, it doesn't meet our standards, we change it, we launch it later. But, as we have talked about, we are pacing our progress, which includes sometimes not training the model. The – everybody wants great models. Well, actually, not everybody. Many people want great models.
ROONEY: Not everybody?
ALTMAN: We want great models. But we have to do these in a way where we can make very confident safety cases and claims, so that people don't have a bunch of anxiety and can rely on us for the models we're putting out into the world. We are now in a period where the models are getting so good so fast that we think it is prudent and wise to make more progress on – since we're talking about safety, alignment, monitoring so that we can continue with progress. But I think this idea of pacing is really important. It's not just like stop it because we don't want smarter models. Of course we want better models. It is to make sure that we improve the areas we need to confidently and safely continue with progress. And I think the President –
ROONEY: So, pacing doesn't always mean slowing. And I think that's something that has confused people.
ALTMAN: Yes. It means doing it in a responsible way with guarantees that the world can rely on.
ROONEY: Hugging Face, we got to talk about that for a second. That was just this watershed moment, and it feels we have had examples every other day since then. Did you underestimate at the time the depth of these issues? I mean, there's been reports that there are thousands of these. Has it surprised you?
ALTMAN: We're trying to -- I think part of the way you want to do this is to really overcommunicate and be extremely transparent. So, there's nothing else that I'm aware of or that we're aware of that is as serious as the Hugging Face incident, but we are trying to put out every small or otherwise case we can find. And we really, as part of our mission, want the world to understand what's -- what these models are capable of. One of the things that's special about OpenAI is, we have a lot of breadth. We do consumer, we do enterprise, we do developers, and people have very different ways of thinking about where we are with AI. And we want to make sure that all of these people that are touching our products and living in the world get a sense of where the technology is and what the kind of risks we have to mitigate are.
ROONEY: Do you feel there's just more attention on OpenAI? It feels like others have not had the same level of incidents.
ALTMAN: That's kind of what –
ROONEY: Or is it just that we're paying more attention?
ALTMAN: That's kind of what I was trying to go there.
ROONEY: Sure.
ALTMAN: So, we just touch so many people and we do so much different stuff.
ROONEY: OK. So, Jensen Huang, Nvidia's CEO, put out this basically piece of software that he said would have prevented Hugging Face. And he said it's an engineering problem. OpenAI didn't sign on to that project. Why not? Anthropic and others did. Do you agree with Jensen that it could have been solved?
ALTMAN: I – from what I know about it and I'm not super into the details I think it's a good thing. I think we are doing similar things. I don't think it's a full solution. And I worry that if we treat AI safety as only an engineering problem, we will miss the very important point that we have a science problem in front of us. We still have discovery about how to align these models, and we have to solve that scientific problem too.
ROONEY: OK, at the same time, as we mentioned, we are here at Developer Day.
ALTMAN: Yes.
ROONEY: You have, I mean, it looks hundreds of developers, companies, I would think investors here too. How are you toeing the line between trying to get these people to use your technology, show them how great it is, but at the same time tell them that it's safe?
ALTMAN: I mean, I think it's a similar thrust. Like, people want to be able to use this technology and know that it's going to be safe. So I think part of it being a great technology is to have it be the safest, most aligned, most dependable AI in the industry.
ROONEY: One question on liability. So, if something does go wrong, so, say one of these start-ups here builds a great app using OpenAI and something goes terribly wrong.
ALTMAN: Yes.
ROONEY: Whose fault is that?
ALTMAN: The liability framework is being debated a lot in the world right now. I suspect, like other industries, there will be a sort of multilevel thing. Like, if you think about the auto industry, for example, if there's faulty parts, you can be liable in some ways there. If the car manufacturer puts them together in a way that's outside of the spec of what they're supposed to do, then the car manufacturer could be. And if someone's driving drunk, it's their fault. So, depending on whether the fault is in the model and how it's used or someone misusing it intentionally, I assume we will have like a new liability framework.
ROONEY: What is your pitch today to developers? Cost seems like it's been a big theme for you guys, but what are you going to tell people on stage in terms of why OpenAI, why ChatGPT, in your mind, is the best option for these guys?
ALTMAN: We have more than 20 announcements today, so we will be throwing them a lot of things.
ROONEY: Yes, give us a flavor, by the way. What are we, what are we going to hear?
ALTMAN: I mean, new ways to use AI, new, sort of new ability to have AI systems working for you and helping you all the time, new models. We will talk about the cost issue.
ROONEY: Yes.
ALTMAN: We really, and a lot of new tools for developers. It's really a lot of, I think, exciting stuff. It is cool to see all of this come together, and the degree to which I think we just have the best offering for developers across the board.
ROONEY: Well, cost is such a central topic here, and we have also talked before about the issue of distillation. I mean, some of the open-source models that are cheaper, you and Anthropic have accused of basically copying your technology. How are you feeling about distillation and those models?
ALTMAN: I think we have the best models to offer at every price point.
ROONEY: Yes.
ALTMAN: And I don't think, like, people do talk about open-source, but I don't think there's any open-source model out there that you can run that beats us on a cost, price comparison. And speaking of cost generally, come watch. We got, we got some cool stuff.
ROONEY: Yes. OK, well, agents as well. So Mark Zuckerberg and Muse have made a lot of progress, it seems like, in agents, in hardware. What do you make of Muse? Have you tried it at all?
ALTMAN: I have tried it. It seems like a nice product.
ROONEY: Are you threatened by Zuckerberg at all?
ALTMAN: No.
ROONEY: Not at all?
ALTMAN: Well, I mean, he's a very impressive person, and that company has great resources, but I feel very good about our road map.
ROONEY: He's also showed what's possible with hardware. Where's Jony Ive?
ALTMAN: I don't want to spoil your surprise, but I think we will have something that's worth waiting for.
ROONEY: Today, we may have some hardware news? Is that what you're saying?
ALTMAN: Not today. Not today.
ROONEY: OK. Well, what is the plan on hardware? And does it put more pressure to have an even better product if Mark Zuckerberg seems to have kind of gotten out of the gates first, even though maybe some of their stuff is still in the works?
ALTMAN: I am not worried about being first with new hardware. New hardware is very hard to do. Like, new computing form factors come along very rarely, and the quality bar that we want to hit for something that you will love and really be a key part of the way you interface with AI, that's going to take a while, and we're going to do that at a high level of quality.
ROONEY: I also want to ask about the perception. We were just talking about the "SNL Weekend Update." There is obviously a movie about you. I don't know if you have seen the trailer. There's some issues in terms of public perception, and just this thought that maybe you, maybe Dario Amodei, as leaders, don't have the best reputation right now.
ALTMAN: I mean, I think everyone doing something this important to society deserves great scrutiny. I did see the movie trailer. I mean, it looks an awful movie, but I appreciate people's creativity, and I really do support that. So I hope they have a fun time with it. The – but this is, like, a big thing, and I get why people have anxiety. And also, if they need to project that anxiety onto someone or have a little bit of relief and poke fun at me, it doesn't bother me.
ROONEY: I know we got to go in a second. But Greg Brockman, one of your co-founders, is in Washington, D.C., today.
ALTMAN: Yes.
ROONEY: You were there at the state dinner last night. What is your expectation of what's possible in D.C.? And what have the conversations looked behind the scenes, especially on international coordination?
ALTMAN: I don't want to be too optimistic, because I have been wrong before when I thought something was going to happen in D.C., and you know, it didn't. But I do feel like people are taking it seriously this time. And I'm optimistic. I'm optimistic. In spite of previous experience, I'm optimistic.
ROONEY: OK, IPO timeline. I know you don't like to talk about the IPO.
ALTMAN: I'm not going to talk about that.
ROONEY: But you said it's ill-advised to go this year. Is anything going to change next year? I mean, the safety debate, will that be in the rearview mirror when you go out potentially in '27?
ALTMAN: I don't have a particular timeline in mind. I – once we have run a few safety cases, once we feel like we understand how to contend with this next level of AI, and do it safely, I think we could. But I, you know, our mission first is about benefiting people with AGI and helping – and making sure that we can ensure safety. And barreling forward with an IPO while I think things feel so in flux, and I really want to be able to just focus on the mission, and not with all of the maybe challenges of being a newly public company, I just – I don't want to do that. I really think this is the time to put safety and mission first.
ROONEY: Fair enough, Sam. Well, we will let you get to your keynote.
ALTMAN: Thank you.
ROONEY: We will be tuning in as well. We really appreciate your time.
ALTMAN: I hope you enjoy it. Thanks for coming.
For more information contact:
Stephanie Hirlemann
CNBC
