Capital Economy, Business and Finance
Sam Altman, founder and CEO of OpenAI, could become $10 billion richer. Bloomberg reports that as part of a restructure, Altman will get a 7 per cent equity stake. This will become even more valuable if the company completes its latest round of fundraising – said to be the largest in history at $6.5 billion. OpenAI was founded as a nonprofit research firm developing AI that “benefits humanity”. Altman has never taken equity, once telling a conference he has “enough money”. Now OpenAI is openly planning to become a for-profit business in a shift that seems to have been a long time coming. Last November Altman was removed and reinstated as CEO within a week, apparently as a result of a split with the company’s co-founder Ilya Sutskever over its nonprofit status. Sutskever has since left, and three more senior executives quit yesterday. Altman said their departures were unrelated to the restructuring.
