OpenAI CEO Sam Altman made a name for himself as the founder of ChatGPT, but his real fortune comes from elsewhere.
Ironically he doesn’t hold any stake in OpenAI.
As a CEO, his annual salary is only $76,000 (100 million won).
Nevertheless, his net worth is estimated at about $1.2 billion to $2 billion (W1.6 trillion to W2.7 trillion).
The overall value of the portfolio invested personally is valued at more than $2.8 billion (3.8 trillion won).
All this wealth comes from the seeds of investment he has planted over the past 15 years.
It started with the sale of Loft, a location-based social networking service founded in 2005 after dropping out of Stanford University, for $43.4 million (58.6 billion won).
With the funds, he founded venture capital fund Hydrazine Capital with his brother Jack Altman in 2012.
Most of the initial $21 million (28.4 billion won) was invested by Peter Till, his mentor and a strong supporter of Silicon Valley.
Under Till’s mentorship, Altman has grown into a promising Silicon Valley investor.
From 2014 to 2019, he served as CEO of Y Combinator and encountered thousands of startups, and developed an eye for selecting jewelry among them.
The most brilliant performance in his investment portfolio is Reddit.
After nine years of daily use of the service in 2014, it led Series B funding worth $50 million (67.5 billion won), and invested an additional $60 million (81 billion won) in 2021.
When Reddit listed on the New York Stock Exchange in March 2024, his 8.7% stake exceeded $600 million (W810 billion) in a single day.
Altman is the largest shareholder with more stake than Reddit CEO Steve Huffman.
Initial investments in Airbnb and Uber also yielded dozens of times more returns.
The decision to invest $15,000 (20 million won) in 2009 in Stripe, a fintech company with a total corporate value of $65 billion (87 trillion won), has become a legend.
To truly understand Altman’s investment philosophy, we need to look at the two companies he has poured most of his personal assets into.
In 2021, he invested $375 million (W506.3 billion) in fusion startup Helion Energy.
It also invested $180 million (243 billion won) in Retro Biosciences, a long-lived biotech company.
This large sum of more than $550 million (W742.5 billion) is the largest amount of his personal investment.
Helion has an ambitious goal of creating infinite clean energy through fusion and has already signed a power supply agreement with Microsoft.
Altman not only chaired Helion’s board of directors, but also served as chairman of the board of Oklo, a fission-based clean energy company.
O’KLO will go public through a SPAC merger in 2024, making another bet in nuclear energy a reality.
Considering the explosive power demand of artificial intelligence data centers, this is also directly related to the future of open AI.
Retro Biosciences has set a goal of extending human lifespan by 10 years through cell reprogramming.
Another of his investments, Worldcoin, is building an infrastructure that distinguishes humans from bots in the age of artificial intelligence with a digital identification system through iris scanning.
If you follow this flow, you can see a certain pattern.
Altman doesn’t just chase returns.
He bets on technologies that will solve human existential problems around three pillars: artificial intelligence, energy, and biotechnology.
There is something he emphasized when he was a Y Combinator.
“We focus on investing in high-difficulty technologies.”
His investment empire also caused controversy over conflicts of interest with OpenAI.
Reddit, which he invested in, signed a licensing agreement with OpenAI, and Humane’s AI pin, which is developing a screenless wearable AI device, is equipped with ChatGPT.
Slope, a fintech company that provides a B2B payment platform, and Warp, which is developing a next-generation terminal app equipped with AI functions, use the model of OpenAI.
Altman’s bet is, after all, building an ecosystem for a future dominated by artificial intelligence.
Infinite energy, extended lifespan and preservation of human identity.
This is the blueprint Sam Altman draws.
Why did Bessent talk about Japan again? Yesterday, Finance Minister Bessent made a remark, especially…
What will the future of artificial intelligence and capitalism look like from a Marxist perspective?…
Yesterday and today, our market is enjoying a tremendous rise with a lot of good…
Why U.S. Consumption Stays Somewhat From a Different Perspective There's an interesting research result, so…
When will Tesla come out with self-driving technology F FSD v14.1.2 Early Access Initiation —…
"It's a relief that Samsung Electronics won't sell"…Recapturing 'No. 1 Memory Market' Over SK Hynix…