Gen Z is entering a job market that artificial intelligence is turning upside down, and according to OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, the disruption is only getting started. His message to ambitious young workers: ditch the standard playbook and bet on what comes next.

"It's totally true that huge numbers of tasks that people do today will be done better, cheaper, and faster by AI—and completely differently," Altman said in an interview last week with Stanford's Graduate School of Business.

In his view, "wide swaths" of current jobs, at least as they are performed today, will be entirely handled by AI. At the same time, he cautioned that the transformation will not arrive as quickly as many people expect. For workers prepared to take a different path, he argued, the upheaval could be an opening—particularly for those thinking about what new businesses could be built with AI. The remarks carry particular weight coming from Altman: he leads the very company whose technology, by his own account, the next generation of major companies will be built on.

"My chronic disappointment with MBA students is that they always want to go do the thing that was cool five years ago rather than try something new," Altman said. "I think this is a great time to go do the new thing."

A rare window for founders: 'The playing field is most open,' Altman says

For Altman, the opportunity extends beyond finding a way to stand out in the job market. He believes AI could unlock companies that would have been difficult—or impossible—to build just a few years ago.

"There are many companies that can be built on top of the technology OpenAI has put out into the world that will be much bigger and, I hope, more important than OpenAI," he said.

Altman knows a thing or two about starting a company from scratch. In 2005, he dropped out of Stanford, where he was studying computer science, to cofound Loopt, a location-based social networking startup that was later acquired. He went on to join startup accelerator Y Combinator, serving as its president from 2014 to 2019.

Today, he sees AI as a chance for a new generation of founders to tackle problems that once seemed out of reach. "If you're heading into the world right now to work on something, I think you want to start your career at a time of the greatest change, when the playing field is most open," Altman told Stanford students. "I think people with high potential, drive, ideas, a new way of looking at things, and new skills tend to do relatively well when the ground is shaking the most."

Many Americans are already taking that entrepreneurial leap. In 2025, they filed 5.7 million applications to start new businesses, the highest annual total in the two decades the U.S. Census Bureau has tracked the data—a total that outstrips even the pandemic-era surge in new company formation.

Alexis Ohanian and Mark Cuban agree that AI is giving entrepreneurs a leg up

Other prominent founders and investors have echoed the argument that AI is handing a new generation of ambitious entrepreneurs an advantage.

Alexis Ohanian, who traces the origins of Reddit back to a Waffle House visit when he was 19, has made a similar case: founders who build with AI from day one hold an edge because they are not trying to retrofit the technology into an older business.

"Anyone who has started a company in the last two years has been building a company in the AI age, and they are at a default advantage, because the DNA of their organization is in this new world," he told Fortune last year.

"There are folks very hungry right now who are building new companies, who are ready to drink the milkshake of so many incumbents. That founding DNA makes a huge difference in how well they're going to be able to execute, how well they're going to be able to build."

Billionaire entrepreneur and former Shark Tank investor Mark Cuban has likewise urged entrepreneurs to treat AI as a competitive advantage rather than an optional extra.

"If you're not using [AI] to move faster or make smarter decisions, you're behind," Cuban told Fortune in 2025.

"[AI isn't] just a tool, it's leverage. If you're not using AI to move quicker and make smarter decisions, you're at a disadvantage," Cuban said. "The most successful entrepreneur will understand how to properly use AI."

Across the three voices, the argument converges: whatever pace the AI transition ultimately keeps, they contend, the edge belongs to those who build around the technology from day one rather than retrofit it afterward.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com.