It's a Friday evening in the offices of OpenAI, a company that is riding one of the most exciting commercial and technological waves in history. Sam Altman, the founder and CEO, is answering some emails after a long day of meetings.

He flicks through emails on staffing and strategy and then he opens one from the chairman of the OpenAI board that would change the course of the company forever. He has been fired.

This is the story of Sam Altman and a few lessons we can take away.


p.s. our first sponsor is below - give them some love!

Visual-based newsletter on business and tech

We explain the latest business, finance, and tech news with visuals and data. 📊

All in one free newsletter that takes < 5 minutes to read. 🗞

Save time and become more informed today.👇

Sam Altman

Unless you have been living under a rock for the last 18 months you will have used ChatGPT. It is the fastest-growing consumer app of all time. Faster than Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat - all of them. It hit 100 million users within 2 months.

The company that built it, OpenAI, is full of some of the world's smartest and most ambitious minds headed by a young-looking, unassuming man, called Sam Altman.

Much like Bill Gates owned the 90s, Mark Zuckerberg owned the 2000s and Elon Musk owned the 2010s, it’s looking like Sam Altman might own the 2020s.

But who is he? And what makes him such a Change Maker?

Sam has always been an outlier. He’s an openly gay man, and has been described as “nerdy and precocious,” with an “extremely good [ability] at becoming powerful” (Paul Graham).

He went to Stanford but dropped out to pursue his first start-up called Loopt, which was an early version of Snapmaps or FindMyFriends. He sold it after a few years for $42 million, despite not getting any traction.

He then quickly moved on to become the President of Y Combinator (the topic of a previous newsletter). During this time, he built up enormous wealth from investing in companies like Reddit and Stripe.

He left in 2015 to found OpenAI. In hindsight, this was clearly the right decision but at the time Machine Learning and AI were in their infancy. There were no certainties about any of it, and OpenAI was just a research lab, experimenting with things and seeing what stuck, all done through the lens of moving towards the companies vision of “developing AI for the benefit of humanity”.

OpenAI's pivotal breakthrough occurred with the release of GPT-3, the third iteration of their Generative Pre-trained Transformer series. This development demonstrated the practical utility and effectiveness of large language models, establishing a significant milestone in AI research.

This bit of world-changing technology came after years of struggle for Altman and the team. Here are a few of the “extremely painful moments,” as he would call them:

1. Moving from a non-profit to a for-profit

Creating AI models is exorbitantly expensive, and to even have a chance of getting to AGI they had to raise a lot of money. As they were founded as a non-profit this made it exceptionally difficult as, from an investor’s perspective, there was no upside. 

So in 2019 Altman and the board transitioned OpenAI to a for-profit model - capping Returns at 1000x. Not only was this publicly scrutinized but it also resulted in internal struggles between the AI purists and those looking to profiteer.

2. Getting fired in 2023

By far the most famous of his struggles was when he was fired by the OpenAI board in November 2023.  What is quite unbelievable for a company of its size is, to this day, the full reason for his termination is still unknown. The commonly held belief is that internal struggles reached boiling points and those who were concerned with AI safety thought Altman’s profit-maximizing tendencies were becoming dangerous.

That being said he was reinstated just three days later.  We’re looking forward to when his autobiography comes out and we find out the true reasons.

3. Being sued by Elon in 2024

While it was somewhat unknown, Elon Musk was one of the original investors and co-founders of OpenAI. As long-time proponent and activist for AI safety Elon and Sam have come to loggerheads a few times during OpenAI.

Most recently, when Elon sued OpenAI and Sam, accusing them of being in contravention of the original company mandate of releasing their research “Openly” and for the benefit of humanity - Elon suggested it’s kind of why it’s called OpenAI. Elon said if they changed their name to “ClosedAI” he would withdraw the lawsuit. It’s certainly possible Elon is now only jealous of their recent success and this is a bit of a competitive manoeuvring.

Here are a few things we can learn from Sam

1. If you have high conviction make a big bet

In one of his essays, he describes how all the successful people he knows have so much self-belief it is almost to the point of delusion. And with this self-belief comes the ability to take risks that are necessary for success. 

The ability to spend years and great resources on things that seemingly seem destined to fail is what is often required to bring about real change in the world.

And if you carry high conviction in something, give it everything.

2. Patience 

Despite his young age, Sam has had the patience to see things through. During the early years of OpenAI, the highest probable outcome was that this “AI idea” would turn out to be nothing more than another failed technology.

It was 7 years between founding OpenAI and ChatGPT coming out - before this OpenAI didn’t have a simple path to market. The ability to stay and take the punches sets apart those willing to keep moving forward.

3. If you believe something needs to change, be the change

Believing something needs to change, and doing something about it are two totally different things. The most common action is inaction - especially when the odds are significantly stacked against you, like in the case of bringing AI into the world. It would have been easy for Sam to fund an AI company, or sit on a board somewhere. He didn’t. He took it into his own hands and made the change he wanted to see.

In summary:

Once in a generation, a technology comes around that fundamentally changes the way the world works. AI is that technology. OpenAI is leading the charge and Sam Altman is the man steering the ship.

Some more reading:

• Sam Altman's Essay on “How to be Successful”

• Lex Friedman Interviews Sam on the future of AI

• Sam discusses getting sued by Elon