Sam Altman met with electric utility executives Wednesday at an Edison Electric Institute gathering in Colorado Springs, the latest step in a months-long OpenAI push to sell power companies on AI-driven grid defense, POLITICO's Aaron Mak reported Thursday.

What happened

The talks began July 20, according to POLITICO.

In July, OpenAI hosted chief information security officers from a dozen major utilities at its San Francisco headquarters to work through grid resilience.

At Wednesday's session, Altman walked executives through how OpenAI is trying to keep its most advanced models from being turned against grid systems. He also pitched Daybreak, the company's $1 billion cybersecurity initiative. Duke Energy, Exelon, Southern Company and NextEra Energy were in the room.

Last week, a separate group met on deploying Daybreak. Attendees included Dominion Energy and Southern California Edison. Those companies serve more than half the U.S. population, per POLITICO.

Why it counts

EEI hosted. The utilities set the agenda. OpenAI came to them.

That diligence has teeth. The briefings started after an autonomous AI system breached Hugging Face in July, an attack OpenAI later confirmed involved its own agents. Anthropic and Meta reported similar exploits in the weeks that followed.

Utilities answer for every technology dollar in a way most industries never do. Cost recovery rules put those decisions in front of regulators, so the spending gets justified in public before it gets made. OpenAI global energy policy head John McCarrick drew the contrast with big banks in comments to POLITICO.

Every safeguard on that agenda turns into a job description.

The numbers

The electric power industry supports more than 7 million American jobs, about 5 percent of all U.S. employment, according to EEI. That splits into nearly 2.7 million direct jobs across employees, contractors, supply chain and investment, plus 4.4 million induced.

One in every 20 U.S. jobs depends on the industry, EEI reports, and each direct job supports another 1.7.

Veterans hold roughly 10 percent of those jobs.

What comes next

Continuous monitoring needs analysts. Hardened substations need technicians. Secure interconnections for large new loads need engineers and electricians.

The pipelines already run: the Center for Energy Workforce Development, Troops to Energy Jobs, and Veterans in Energy.

The Bottom Line

Grid security budgets turn into payroll. The industry is staffing for a threat that keeps moving, and it needs more people walking in the door.

Reliable power. Affordable power. Great jobs.

Positive Current

Sources: POLITICO, "Sam Altman pitches utilities on AI grid defense," by Aaron Mak, Sept. 10, 2026, Aaron Mak on X (@aarontmak), Edison Electric Institute (@Edison_Electric), EEI Workforce Development, About EEI