Why the AI age calls for ‘founder mode’

AI anxiety hit a fever pitch this September, when a former Anthropic researcher warned on X that the technology could destroy humanity—and accused major frontier labs of “gambling with our lives.” The outcry had the feel of a cultural turning point, reminiscent of February 2020, when the COVID pandemic hit—the moment when a danger that experts had been warning about suddenly became impossible for the public to ignore.

I flew to San Francisco to speak with the person perhaps best positioned to address whether the people building AI can stay in control of it. In an exclusive, hour-long conversation for Fortune’s Titans podcast, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and I discussed the real risks that AI poses for humanity; how quickly models are improving; and what he would do if he concluded that AI could not be built safely.

We also spoke about OpenAI’s eventual IPO. Altman called a public offering “ill-advised” amid the current safety debate and said it would not take place before 2027. Read about our conversation at fortune.com/titans.

For corporate leaders, AI’s threat is no abstraction. It is already reshaping talent, supply chains, and the very definition of good leadership. Increasingly, the era of the cautious, data-driven technocrat is giving way to the approach known as “founder mode.” The term doesn’t apply only to founder-CEOs; it refers to a hands-on, conviction-driven form of leadership—one that resists inherited assumptions, stays close to the work, and acts quickly to address problems.

As General Motors CEO Mary Barra told me when I interviewed her, also for Titans, “Agility is a superpower now.”

That is the posture required in a world being reshaped at astonishing speed. The winners will not merely develop an AI strategy, they will rethink what their companies can become in this era.

That is exactly the challenge facing Apple, where Tim Cook’s extraordinary run was defined by operational mastery—building upon iPhone’s dominance while weaving an extraordinarily profitable global ecosystem of products, services, and retail. Now, with longtime product executive John Ternus taking the reins, Apple faces new risks and opportunities. Can it find a new way to surprise us in the AI era?

Across this issue, the spirit of founder mode is on display: Nikesh Arora has rebuilt Palo Alto Networks to confront cyber threats augmented by terrifyingly powerful AI; David Cote has helped make the industrial cooling company Vertiv indispensable to the data center boom; and Andrew Forrest is wagering that even mining can be reinvented for a lower-carbon future. Forrest’s company, Fortescue, is one of the 50 honored on our 12th annual Change the World list.

Then there’s Travis Kalanick, perhaps the most hardcore embodiment of founder mode. The polarizing Uber cofounder is back, building Atoms, an ambitious industrial robotics venture. Jeff John Roberts examines Kalanick’s second act.

In a moment that demands both imagination and clear-eyed judgment, we hope this issue helps you see not only what is changing—but what it will take to lead through it.

This article appears in the October/November 2026 issue of Fortune with the headline “ Can superintelligence ever be controlled?”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com