Valve co-founder Gabe Newell broke his silence in a rare, low-key YouTube interview sharing his daily routine and thoughts on AI and business.
The short clips, confirmed legit by Valve, dropped on a tiny channel with just 30 subscribers. Newell covered his work schedule, saying, "I get up, I work, I go scuba diving, work some more," then either dive again or hit the gym.
On AI, Newell pressed both investing in technical skills and mastering AI tools as key. He predicted people without long programming backgrounds but skilled at using AI tools could outpace veteran coders. 
Gabe Newell stated:
"I think it’s both."
"I think the more you understand what underlies these current tools, the more effective you are at taking advantage of them."
"But I think we’ll be in this funny situation where people who don’t know how to program who use AI to scaffold their programming abilities will become more effective developers of value than people who’ve been programming for a decade."
"Even if you’re just a pure tool user, you’re gonna find that the gains to utilizing those tools are very, very high. But I think your ability to use those tools will continue to improve the more you understand the underlying methods and mindsets of people developing machine learning systems."
"So I think it’s both, and I think they’re highly complementary."
Newell also dismissed startup culture hype around fundraising pitches. He said success depends on creating value for customers, partners, and employees—not chasing capital.
Gabe Newell added:
"The capital will come your way, probably at a reduced cost than it would be otherwise."
"Having a big bunch of capital and then saying, ‘Oh, I guess all those lies we told in our pitch dek, now we have to go out and hire a bunch of people to be on this trajectory.’ I think that’s a great way of destroying a bunch of money and wasting a bunch of people’s time."
"So I think the key is to ignore all the distractions around it and just focus on, how do we make our customers happier? If you listen to your customers and focus on them, it’s ridiculously easier to build a business."
"The focus should always be on your customers and on your partners and on your employees. And then everything else will fall into place over time."
The interview forms part of a bigger conversation scheduled later this month. It shows Newell’s steady acknowledgment of AI’s impact, contrasting with some industry players who claim generative AI is central to their business.
Watch the interview on YouTube.
