Semafor World Economy Summit 2026• Apr 29, 2026• 18:02ConferenceInterview

OpenAI's Chris Lehane at Semafor World Economy

From Semafor World Economy Summit 2026 · 2026

Chris Lehane•Head of Global Policy and Communications, OpenAI

Executive Summary

OpenAI's core strategy is to aggressively secure massive compute capacity, viewing it as the fundamental driver of innovation, revenue (projecting a 3x return on new capacity), and competitive advantage.
The company is proactively shaping the regulatory landscape by engaging with state governments (IL, NY, CA) to create de facto national safety standards in the absence of federal action.
AI is framed as a geopolitical imperative, with the US needing to scale its energy and compute infrastructure to compete with China, which has a significant lead in energy generation.
OpenAI is managing public perception and adoption through a multi-pronged approach, including democratizing access, acquiring media properties like TBPN, and framing AI data centers as a catalyst for US re-industrialization.

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Concerns Raised

The significant lead China has in energy generation, a key input for compute.
Negative public sentiment and anti-AI movements potentially hindering progress and adoption.
Lack of federal action on AI regulation creates a complex and fragmented state-by-state compliance landscape.
The risk of major distribution platforms (like X) throttling content from acquired media properties.

Opportunities Identified

Securing long-term compute capacity to create a durable competitive advantage.
Driving a wave of US re-industrialization through the construction of data centers and related infrastructure.
Leading successive AI platform shifts (e.g., reasoning to agentic AI) faster than competitors.
Establishing AI-powered cybersecurity as a form of public infrastructure, creating deep government and enterprise partnerships.

Key Themes

The Compute Imperative

OpenAI's strategy is fundamentally built on securing a dominant position in compute power, with a goal of 30 gigawatts by 2030. This is seen as the finite resource that directly fuels innovation, enabling rapid platform shifts (e.g., from reasoning to agentic AI) and creating a significant competitive moat.

Access to massive-scale compute is the primary determinant of leadership in the AI race, directly impacting a company's ability to train frontier models, lower costs for users, and drive the next wave of technological breakthroughs.

Geopolitical AI Race

The development of AI is cast as a two-nation race between the United States and China, the only countries capable of building at the required scale. The speaker highlights the significant disparity in energy generation—a proxy for compute potential—as a critical national challenge for the U.S.

The outcome of this competition has profound implications for global economic leadership, military superiority, and the dominance of democratic versus autocratic values in the deployment of powerful AI systems.

AI as an Industrial Policy Catalyst

The immense infrastructure required for AI, particularly data centers, is presented as a historic opportunity for the re-industrialization of the United States. This involves not just construction jobs but also revitalizing former industrial areas and creating new economic models where communities can benefit directly from local compute resources.

This narrative reframes the AI build-out from a purely technological endeavor to a national economic project, aiming to secure public and political support by promising broad-based job creation and community wealth.

Shaping Public Perception and Regulation

OpenAI is actively working to counter anti-AI sentiment and create a favorable operating environment. The strategy involves promoting widespread user adoption to demonstrate benefits, acquiring media assets (TBPN) to educate influential audiences, and lobbying for liability shields and safety standards at the state level.

Public acceptance and a predictable regulatory framework are critical for the long-term viability of AI companies, allowing them to deploy powerful models without facing prohibitive legal challenges or public backlash.

Public-Private Partnership in the AI Era

The speaker argues that since AI is a dual-use technology being developed by the private sector, close collaboration with government is essential. This is demonstrated through OpenAI's work with the Pentagon and its positioning of AI-powered cybersecurity tools as a form of public infrastructure.

The unprecedented power of AI necessitates a new model of cooperation between tech companies and democratic governments to address national security threats and ensure the technology is deployed safely and for the public benefit.

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Topics

AI Regulation Compute Capacity Data Centers Geopolitics US-China Tech Race OpenAI Public Perception Industrial Policy AI Safety Agentic AI Economic Impact of AI Government Partnerships Pentagon Media Strategy Energy Consumption

Processed May 10, 2026 yt-dlp + mlx-whisper + Gemini

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