OpenAI’s CEO Sam Altman has speculated about how long it will take for artificial intelligence to replace senior leadership teams in organisations. “Shame on me,” Altman told the Conversations with Tyler podcast in November 2025, “if OpenAI is not the first big company run by an AI CEO.”
Altman is not the only one thinking about corporate robot leaders. Mark Zuckerberg has revealed he is training an AI agent to partly automate his job as the boss of Meta.
The promise of an AI CEO, powered by machine learning and neural networks, is that it can streamline decision-making and improve management operations. This vision is not new: in 2017, Jack Ma, CEO of Chinese e-commerce company Alibaba, was already predicting the rise of android business leaders.
Since then, several companies have installed a humanoid AI bot as their chief executive, including Chinese videogame company NetDragon Websoft and Polish drinks company Dictador. While these examples are probably publicity stunts dressed up as corporate strategy, the theory is that AI can do anything a human leader can do – only better and cheaper.
Sam Altman in conversation at the Progress Conference last year.
