Empire of AI: Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman's OpenAI

by Karen Hao

Altman liked to say that he had taken no equity in OpenAI to avoid corrupting the quest of safe AGI with his own desires for profit. He made only a yearly salary of $65,000 and accumulated his wealth through other ventures. The sentiment had a nice ring to it—and echoed his original rhetoric around why OpenAI started as a nonprofit. It was also a statement, like the nonprofit status of the organization, that by 2021 no longer reflected the full truth. Altman had a significant stake in YC, and YC, through its $10 million investment in OpenAI, could receive up to a $1 billion return. As OpenAI continued to commercialize, many YC startups and many of his other investments would also become customers or commercial partners of the company. The Wall Street Journal would subsequently calculate Altman’s net worth in June 2024 across all his holdings to be at least $2.8 billion. With the OpenAI Startup Fund, Altman added yet another complication to his altruistic narrative—one that would eventually play its own small part in his fleeting ouster.