'Companies that are not set up to quickly adopt AI workers will be at a huge disadvantage': OpenAI Sam Altman warns firms not to fall behind on AI - but notes 'it’s going to take a lot of work and some risk'

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has laid out his vision for the future of how humans and AI will work together, but warned on potentially severe effects for those businesses which have fallen behind.

Speaking at the Cisco AI Summit 2026, Altman outlined how AI tools and humanity can collaborate on a wide range of tasks, boosting productivity and efficiency across industires.

“The capability of AI feels to me the biggest it’s ever been,” Altman added. “We are planning for a world where demand will grow at an accelerated pace each year...Companies that are not set up to quickly adopt AI workers will be at a huge disadvantage. And it’s going to take a lot of work and some risk.”

AI headwinds

In a wide-ranging fireside chat with Cisco president Jeetu Patel, Altman also discussed the possible headwinds which could affect the AI industry going forward.

After a significant pause, he answered, "some sort of global destabilisation, mega supply chain disruption,” was the biggest concern.

Asked about current problem child of the AI world Moltbook, Altman noted he could envisage a world where AI agents could interact with each other and lead to new types of interactions.

This includes via OpenAI's recent-announced Codex app, which promises huge steps forward in coding ability and capabilities.

Altman said Codex was like he had “felt another ChatGPT moment” where there is a “clear view of the future of knowledge work and how enterprises and individual people are going to work in a completely different way”.

“Given an AI agent full access to your computer and your web browser with all your sessions leads to incredible stuff – and that seems here to stay,” he added. “OpenAI did an incredible job of bringing many ideas together to make that feel useable and real. That seems certain to be part of our future.”

But perhaps unsurprisingly, Altman was in a positive mood about AI adoption, noting that many observers are underestimating how much language models will improve.

“The models are going to get so much better quickly,” he said, predicting a "subjective 10x improvement" in 2026, "we've been trying to figure out how we can communicate about what we think is happening.”

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