The Breakthroughs Needed for AGI Have Already Been Made: OpenAI Former Research Head Bob McGrew

As OpenAI's former Head of Research, Bob McGrew witnessed the company's evolution from GPT-3’s breakthrough to today's reasoning models. He argues that there are three legs of the stool for AGI—Transformers, scaled pre-training, and reasoning—and that the fundamentals that will shape the next decade-plus are already in place. He thinks 2025 will be defined by reasoning while pre-training hits diminishing returns. Bob discusses why the agent economy will price services at compute costs due to near-infinite supply, fundamentally disrupting industries like law and medicine, and how his children use ChatGPT to spark curiosity and agency. From robotics breakthroughs to managing brilliant researchers, Bob offers a unique perspective on AI’s trajectory and where startups can still find defensible opportunities.

Hosted by: Stephanie Zhan and Sonya Huang, Sequoia Capital

Mentioned in this episode:

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Solving Rubik’s Cube with a robot hand (openai.com/index/solving-rubiks-cube): OpenAI’s original robotics research

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Computer Use (anthropic.com/news/3-5-models-and-computer-use) and Operator (openai.com/index/introducing-operator): Anthropic and OpenAI reasoning breakthroughs that originated with OpenAi researchers

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Skild (skild.ai) and Physical Intelligence (physicalintelligence.company): Robotics-oriented companies Bob sees as well-positioned now

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Distyl (distyl.ai): AI company founded by ex-Palintir alums to create enterprise workflows driven by proprietary data

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Member of the technical staff (x.com/petergyang/status/1728441291569307785?la…): Title at OpenAI designed to break down barriers between AI researchers and engineers

Howie.ai (howie.ai): Scheduling app that Bob uses