Forward-looking: OpenAI was founded in December 2015 with a simple, yet ambitious goal: create a “safe and beneficial” artificial general intelligence (AGI) system that is generally smarter than humans. With the calendar having recently rolled over to 2025, the company is closer than ever to achieving its original vision and believes it’ll happen sooner than later.

Co-founder and CEO Sam Altman said in a recent blog post that when they started the company, they believed not only that AGI was possible, but that it could become the most impactful technology in human history.

Few people cared at the time, Altman recounted, and most that did care simply thought they would fail. Everything changed with the launch of ChatGPT in November 2022, however. To their surprise, the launch proved to be a tipping point that kicked off the modern AI revolution – for better or for worse.

Things haven’t been easy or smooth (nothing difficult ever is), but the team has learned an awful lot along the way. As we enter 2025, Altman and company are confident they know how to build AGI as it is traditionally defined as. In fact, it’s possible that we may see the first AI agents “join the workforce” and start helping companies write the next chapter of their journey this year.

With AGI right around the corner, OpenAI is already turning its attention to what’s next. “We love our current products, but we are here for the glorious future,” Altman said. That next step, he said, is superintelligence – and with it, we can do anything.

Superintelligence could rapidly accelerate scientific discover, and pave the way for innovation far beyond what humans can accomplish on their own. Altman teased that such tools could massively increase abundance and prosperity. It sounds like science fiction right now, he admitted, but they’ve been there before and they are comfortable with being there again. He is also well aware that they’ll need to act with great care to prevent things from going off the rails (or worse), but they are up for the challenge.