Sam Altman told Samsung executives that demand for AI memory and data centers has been “double-counted” and that only OpenAI and Anthropic are “actually driving major demand growth,” according to question-and-answer notes published by South Korea’s Financial News. The meeting took place on October 31 at Samsung’s Human Resources Development Center in Yongin, with about 50 affiliate presidents in the room. The remarks became public on November 11, when the newspaper said it had obtained the Q&A, and they quickly landed in the market conversation about whether AI infrastructure demand is being counted more than once.
Quick Take
- What was said: In notes obtained by Financial News, Altman said there had been “double-counting of demand” around memory chips and data centers, tied to the debate over “neoclouds” that rent AI compute.
- The concentration claim: He added that “only two companies, OpenAI and Anthropic, are actually driving major demand growth, so there could be a supply shock and an unsettled period.”
- The long view: He still said that “in the long term, AI demand will grow enormously,” and that the biggest constraints over the next few years are “the chip supply chain and data center infrastructure.”
- The source: These are second-hand notes from a private meeting, not a public OpenAI speech or a Samsung transcript. Neither company has published a matching official text.
- Who is affected: Memory suppliers, neocloud operators, and anyone trying to read chip demand as a clean signal of AI adoption.
In plain English
The head of OpenAI told a room of Samsung leaders that some of the huge orders they hear about for AI chips and data centers may be the same customer counted twice, as the request moves through middlemen. He still thinks demand will be enormous later. He also said, in the newspaper’s account, that only OpenAI and Anthropic are really driving the growth, a claim that is hotly contested and is not a published market-share table. The quotes come from a private meeting, via a newspaper, not from an official transcript.
What happened
Financial News reported on November 11 that it had obtained Q&A materials from Altman’s October 31 meeting in Yongin. Asked whether demand for AI, memory and data centers could saturate or slow over the next five to ten years, Altman answered, in the paper’s wording, “There are short-term fluctuations.” He then pointed to this year’s argument over a bubble in neoclouds, the newer cloud providers that specialize in renting GPUs, and said: “There has been double-counting of demand.” He followed with the line about OpenAI and Anthropic as the two firms driving major growth, and the warning of a possible “supply shock and an unsettled period.”
He also argued the long case. “In the long term, AI demand will grow enormously,” he said, citing future uses such as software written in real time, robots, spacecraft and scientific research. As a token-usage illustration, the notes quote him saying that at the start of 2020 “the top token user consumed about 100,000 tokens a month, but early this year the heaviest user consumed 100 billion tokens a month.” Asked about bottlenecks, he named the supply chain, financing, AI safety and social acceptance, and corporate transformation, and he stressed that “more investment in the supply chain is needed.”
The trip was short, a one-night visit, in a period when Samsung Electronics and SK hynix have been central to high-bandwidth memory supply and have been linked to OpenAI’s Stargate plans. Financial News treated the combination (a caution about short-term demand, delivered to a major supplier, plus a call for more investment) as the newsworthy tension.
How to read “double-counting”
Altman did not, in the published excerpts, attach a percentage or a worked example. The usual industry reading is straightforward: a lab reserves GPUs with a neocloud, the neocloud orders servers from an integrator, the integrator orders memory from Samsung or SK hynix, and each layer may book the same end demand as its own. If analysts add the layers together, capacity plans can run ahead of real consumption. That is a warning about measurement, not a finding that demand is fake.
The more aggressive line is the duopoly claim. Microsoft, Google, Meta, xAI and others also buy large amounts of capacity. Financial News is reporting Altman’s words, not endorsing a two-company market. Until OpenAI or Samsung releases the underlying Q&A, the statement should be treated as one buyer’s view of concentration, delivered in a private room, not as a census of AI demand.
Pros and cons
For memory and server suppliers
- Pro: A major customer is telling them to watch for inflated orders and still to invest in the supply chain, which is more useful than pure boosterism.
- Con: Planning capex on a second-hand paraphrase is risky, and a “supply shock” warning can move stocks without a document anyone can audit.
For neoclouds
- Pro: The remarks put a public spotlight on a known bookkeeping problem, which honest operators also want cleaned up.
- Con: Being named as the place where demand is double-counted, even without a spreadsheet, invites a funding and credibility hit.
For OpenAI watchers
- Pro: Altman is no longer speaking only in one direction about infrastructure scarcity.
- Con: Saying only two companies drive growth, while asking suppliers to build more, will be read as both a market claim and a negotiating stance.
What’s still open
- Will OpenAI or Samsung release the Q&A, or confirm the wording?
- How much of reported memory demand is truly duplicated across layers?
- Do other large buyers accept or reject the claim that only OpenAI and Anthropic are driving major growth?
- Whether chip-stock moves after the report last beyond a news cycle.
About the analysis
Researched and written with AI assistance under the editorial responsibility of the i10X News team. The title image is an AI-generated image. Read our AI Use Policy. Spotted an error? Request a correction.
This independent i10x analysis is based on Financial News’ November 11 exclusive reports of Q&A notes from Sam Altman’s October 31, 2026 meeting with Samsung executives, plus follow-up coverage that cites the same notes. i10x has not seen the underlying document and found no matching official transcript on OpenAI or Samsung sites as of November 13, 2026.
i10x Perspective
The valuable sentence is the one about double-counting, not the one about two companies. Infrastructure booms routinely add the same order as it moves down a supply chain, then treat the sum as destiny. If Altman is right about the bookkeeping, suppliers should demand to know who the end user is before they pour another fab. If he is wrong, or only half right, the quote will still have done what private remarks sometimes do when they leak: move a debate that should have been had with data, not with a second-hand Q&A.
