Sam Altman reveals regretful OpenAI mistake that stopped him becoming one of the world's richest men
Despite being the CEO of OpenAI, Sam Altman has shared some regrets he has about one particular mistake he made when co-founding the business.
Altman initially launched the AI company back in 2015 alongside Elon Musk, but if he could go back, there is one thing that the tech mogul would change.
Speaking to Vanity Fair, Altman was asked about the fact that he actually holds zero equity in the business he created. In response, he said: “Yeah, I have no direct equity. I have this tiny, tiny sliver of exposure from an old YC investment.”
Delving into the topic further, Altman continued: “If I could go back and do things over again, I thought I was doing this thing that would - at the time, no one took AI that seriously, right? And so they looked at me then and said, ‘This is crazy. You’re going to work super hard and create all this value and not try to get richer. That’s unimaginable.’ Now, I think all of a sudden more people sort of understand the rationale and yet still people are like, ‘It feels so out of norm’.”
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Altman’s rationale had been that people would want him to make decision based on what was best for humanity, rather than financial interest, however he now views his decision to take no equity as a mistake.
The mogul added: “I think it was a mistake and a lack of understanding of how most people think about the world and weirdly, this big trust-destroying thing to not have equity.
“I had a super successful career. I used to be extremely money motivated, so I’m not trying to say that I’m like, ‘Oh, I just don’t care. I’m like a monk’. I like nice stuff. I have expensive taste by any reasonable stance. But I had a super successful career and there’s not more stuff that I want.
“Now, I think it is fair that you can use money to do more projects. And if I’d had crazy amounts of money and hadn’t had to raise money for OpenAI because I could have just self-funded it, I guess that would’ve been really nice. But I don’t know. I think that this is why I wish I had just taken the stock.”
How rich would Sam Altman be if he had equity in OpenAI?
However, if things had gone differently and Altman had taken his equity in OpenAI, how would the list of the world’s richest people look?
According to Capwave, founders tend to keep around 15% to 25% of equity by late-stage financing or IPO so, if we’re being conservative in our estimates, that would mean Altman could technically be worth a whopping $210 billion from OpenAI equity alone.
This comes after Bloomberg reported that OpenAI is valued at $1.4 trillion, and would place him among the top 10 richest people on the planet.