‘Never bet against Australia’: Why OpenAI thinks one-person start-ups will hit $1bn
OpenAI has opened its first Australian office while predicting the impossible: a single entrepreneur could soon build a billion-dollar empire using artificial intelligence alone.
Australia has a credible chance of breeding “one-person unicorns” — a $1 billion startup run by a single employee — thanks to advanced artificial intelligence, ChatGPT maker OpenAI says.
Sam Altman, OpenAI’s chief executive, says the world is on the cusp of seeing the first one-person billion dollar company, which “would have been unimaginable without AI”.
OpenAI’s chief strategy officer Jason Kwon, who is in Australia for the opening of the company’s first local office in Sydney, agreed with that assessment and that entrepreneurs down under had the tenacity to make it happen.
“The odds seem good based on the data that we have currently, and so, you know, I think it’s probably wise to say, never bet against Australia,” Mr Kwon said when ask directly if Australia had what it takes to build a one-person billion dollar company.
Mr Kwon said Australia has “a tradition of punching above its weight,” possessing the necessary conditions for “outlier success” in the AI era, citing the rise of Atlassian and Canva – which are valued at $US41.2bn ($62.36bn) and $US42bn respectively.
“(Australia) seems far away, but there is a class or group of people, the entrepreneurs here, that really want to be global. You have a lot of ambition here, and it’s combined with talent. And there’s a track record now too, that makes it very believable.”
The foundation of the bet lies in Australia’s existing track record of financial discipline and long-term vision. The country already “produces more billion-dollar start-ups per VC dollar than any other country,” demonstrating exceptional capital efficiency.
OpenAI has forecast that AI will inject more than $140bn a year into the Australian economy by 2030. This is significantly less than the Albanese government’s $600bn a year forecast but still underscores AI’s disruptive force.
OpenAI has already begun wooing Australian start-ups to use its tools, hosting its first ‘Founder Day’ in Sydney this week.
It is committing to the region through a new startup program designed to help local developers “build and scale with cutting-edge AI technologies.” The initiative includes API credits, technical workshops, and direct access to the company’s global experts.
The model is defined by its collaboration with local capital. The program is co-launched with a consortium of prominent Australian venture capital firms, including Blackbird, Square Peg, AirTree, January Capital, NextGen Ventures, and Boab AI.
Mr Kwon said that this “on the ground” strategy was a deliberate departure from the standard playbook of past technology giants.
“This is different than the way that the big tech companies have previously scaled, which has really been to let their technology just kind of grow digitally and then follow that digital growth,” he said.
“We’re trying to really kind of start from this approach of being on the ground and letting that inform iteratively what we do technologically.”
Mr Kwon said Australia was now one of OpenAI’s top 10 developer markets globally, with more than 30,000 local developers building on its API. Australian start-ups already using OpenAI’s technology include Heidi Health, which streamlines clinical documentation so doctors can spend more time with patients; Lorikeet, which powers next-generation customer service through autonomous support agents; and Relevance AI, a Sydney-founded automation and data platform enabling businesses to build and deploy AI-powered workflows, agents and decision systems without the need for large engineering teams.
When questioned about how the founder program would ensure a focus on genuine innovation over immediate, venture-capital driven returns, Mr Kwon offered a perspective rooted in the nature of long-term investing.
“Venture capital returns tend to not be short term based anyway, and so a lot of these investors that we’re working with tend to be longer term focused investors,” he said.
OpenAI’s financial support is directly tied to the technical development process, linking further investment in the form of API credits to participation in technical workshops. This approach is intended to “align long term technical progress with additional investment” and ensure the company is “building with Australians.”
“If we’re able to help more Australian founders build more world impacting companies … that are successful, not just in the Australian market, but they’re able to take that success and make a global impact, and they’re doing it with our technologies. That is … a pretty big success.”
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