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Sam Altman didn’t take any equity in OpenAI, report says
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- Idiot_in_Vain 4y agoIf he took say 25% of the shares, he could become one day soon the next Bill Gates/Elon Musk.
- edgyquant 4y agoMaybe, but he didn’t so what’s your point?
- jpmattia 4y ago> If he took say 25% of the shares, he could become one day soon the next Bill Gates/Elon Musk And perhaps that's exactly why he didn't take shares.
- shagie 4y agoWhile having that much money is certainly tempting, becoming that type of person is much less tempting. He's already worth more than a person can reasonably spend - why risk becoming Bill or Elon?
- xp84 4y agoStrange to group those two into a cautionary statement. Bill seems very happy and seems intent on leaving the world much better than he found it by spending his vast riches, while Elon Musk is Elon Musk.
- UberFly 4y agoThat's a fairly jaundiced and narrow view of the both of them.
- xp84 4y agoCan we agree that say, at least half the people who strongly dislike one of them probably admires the other to some extent? I know marxists would hate both just on the grounds they're wealthy, but everyone else, I'd argue, probably respects one or the other, likely depending on one's own politics.
- deltree7 4y agoI admire both Elon and Bill. They are both geniuses in their own respects. Elon is more anti-social, but probably because Bill had a much comfortable childhood.
- uxcolumbo 4y agoWhat makes Elon a genius in your view?
- deltree7 4y agoI'm probably one of the five people on this earth who gets Elon (not in a way his fanbois do). Let me point out the negatives of Elon i) He is a bull-shitter. He has no clue about a lot of things, yet he has plenty of hubris. ii) He is mis-trusting of people (this always comes from upbringing and environment. If people constantly misplace your trust growing up, your default is to mistrust people). I can understand why you wouldn't want to work under Elon. That's a perfectly valid reason What makes Elon different, and which a lot of people don't get about him (including his fanbois)? i) He is a true Engineer in the sense, even if he starts with bullshit and hubris, he is a quick learner. He breaks things to learn from first principles (Things he has repeatedly demonstrated everywhere). Media/HN focus on him breaking things, but that's what how everyone learns about complex systems. People don't appreciate how quickly he went from from 'Alien Dreadnought' to 'Tent in a backyard' and then back to AI Automation at Tesla. ii) Bias for action with the right amount of risks. Some people have bias for action, some people take risks and some are constant learners. But, I have never seen anyone combine all three like Elon. He is successful not because of his knowledge, but his willingness to take risks despite massive adversity and guaranteed mock by media. iii) He is narcisstic, but not like Trump. He has several times shown self-deprecating humor and acknowledged his mistakes (and quickly learns from them).
- shagie 4y agoGates, during his quest for money was a ruthless business man who squashed nearly every business that stood in his way for more money and more dominance for the company he ran. Musk is very much the same in his destruction of things that stand in the way of him and more money. His attitude isn't the ruthless businessman but rather the unrepentant troll - but his approaches to prevent the funding of things that stand in his way of Tesla ascendant (you get things like https://jalopnik.com/did-musk-propose-hyperloop-to-stop-california-high-spee-1849402460 https://jalopnik.com/did-musk-propose-hyperloop-to-stop-cali... ). Gates is largely over his quest for money and now more concerned with legacy, but that doesn't erase his history. Musk is still very much enmeshed in his quest for money. I believe that Sam Altman doesn't want to have that be part of his goals and with the resources that he already has can fairly comfortably work on what he feels is meaningful now rather than waiting 30 years until he retires.
- shagmin 4y agoAccording to the article Elon Musk could've been even more Elon Musk. He reduced his investment by $900m because he thought it was fatally behind Google's effort.
- tootie 4y agoIt was never an investment, it was a donation back when they were still nonprofit. He said they would never catch Google unless he ran the company, Altman and co refused, he took the ball and went home, then Altman and co beat Google on their own. They just needed to take actual investment and cease being a non-profit to stay funded.
- bilekas 4y agoIf I bought 25% of Bezos' book business I could have been the next Bill Gates too!
- fragsworth 4y agoIs there some other arrangement? It was originally a nonprofit, so there might be something else going on, like board voting rights that he doesn't have to give up - or special voting shares.
- gjsman-1000 4y agoFor being a nonprofit, Microsoft has demonstrated pretty well how you can basically do an acquisition non-acquisition. They've got special exclusive rights to certain uses of the models, all the code, and OpenAI dumping cash into Azure.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- wodenokoto 4y agoIsn’t it Microsoft cash that openai is dumping into azure?
- curiousllama 4y agoDetails, details
- wodenokoto 4y agohttps://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-01-23/microsoft-makes-multibillion-dollar-investment-in-openai https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-01-23/microsoft...
- cma 4y agoMicrosoft's margin on Azure spending is around 75%, so their investment may really be 4 times smaller than reported if it all funnels back in to exclusive spending on their high margin datacenter business (I'm sure lots goes to salaries and other expenses too though).
- svnt 4y ago
- HopenHeyHi 4y agoOpenAI is unlikely to IPO or be acquired outright anytime soon, equity is meaningless - instead, who controls the spice controls the universe.
- 650REDHAIR 4y agoOr it’ll crash and burn like Loopt.
- KyeRussell 4y ago[flagged]
- HopenHeyHi 4y ago[flagged]
- selimthegrim 4y agohttps://i.somethingawful.com/u/boldfrankenstein/The_BLoop6_copy.jpg https://i.somethingawful.com/u/boldfrankenstein/The_BLoop6_c...
- HopenHeyHi 4y agohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4TPmHImjqPQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4TPmHImjqPQ
- pastor_bob 4y agoSam Altman is only 37. He has time to wait.
- wslh 4y agoWe will see a los of OpenAIs (FAANG first) soon. It is the kind of innovation where anybody will catch up.
- huijzer 4y ago
- daniel-thompson 4y agoFrom the original article linked to by this CNBC story: > Altman also made an unusual decision for a tech boss: He would take no equity in the new for-profit entity, according to people familiar with the matter. Altman was already extremely wealthy, investing in several wildly successful tech startups, and didn’t need the money. > He also believed the company needed to become a business to continue its work, but he told people the project was not designed to make money. Eschewing any ownership interest would help him stay aligned with the original mission. https://www.semafor.com/article/03/24/2023/the-secret-history-of-elon-musk-sam-altman-and-openai https://www.semafor.com/article/03/24/2023/the-secret-histor...
- slantedview 4y ago"Eschewing any ownership interest would help him stay aligned with the original mission." Is this a nice acknowledgement that the capitalist drive for profit can produce bad outcomes, which Altman wanted to avoid?
- JumpCrisscross 4y agoDo we know if Altman continues to have no equity in OpenAI?
- danso 4y agoThe article re-asserts that he still has no equity in its closing paragraphs: > For Altman, it’s not about money, either. One of the most surprising things in all of this is that he does not own even a tiny piece of OpenAI, which highlights the unusual nature of this company and the entire AI industry.
- andsoitis 4y agoYou can read up on the corporate structure here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenAI https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenAI
- dmix 4y ago> The nonprofit, OpenAI Inc., is the sole controlling shareholder of OpenAI LP. OpenAI LP, despite being a for-profit company, retains a formal fiduciary responsibility to OpenAI Inc.'s nonprofit charter. A majority of OpenAI Inc.'s board is barred from having financial stakes in OpenAI LP. In addition, minority members with a stake in OpenAI LP are barred from certain votes due to conflict of interest. > The company then distributed equity to its employees and partnered with Microsoft, announcing an investment package of $1 billion into the company. OpenAI also announced its intention to commercially license its technologies. OpenAI plans to spend the $1 billion "within five years, and possibly much faster". Altman has stated that even a billion dollars may turn out to be insufficient, and that the lab may ultimately need "more capital than any non-profit has ever raised" to achieve artificial general intelligence. Otherwise it sounds like Greg Brockman is the main guy of the for profit business?
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- kernal 4y ago>Musk reneged on a publicly announced funding arrangement, providing only $100 million of his planned $1 billion in support, according to the report. So does Musk still have equity with his $100 million investment or did he also pull out of that?
- jonbischke 4y agoSo who owns large stakes in OpenAI exactly? Seems like a somewhat important question given how important the company is shaping up to be to the future of society.
- curiousllama 4y agoMicrosoft owns 49% IIRC. Prob a bunch of the other folks who pledged $ at the beginning as well (Thiel, Musk, etc)
- nostromo 4y agoMusk also says he has no equity. https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1639142924985278466?s=46&t=Rzfz7ma1VEMxiFDXLqgb3Q https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1639142924985278466?s=46...
- pengaru 4y agoMusk says a lot of things...
- Apocryphon 4y agoThis is like how they get a cut of each Android phone sold. Microsoft is gonna profit off of every new wave of technology that others built until the end of time, aren’t they
- blihp 4y agoThat ownership stake is 'on loan' to them until they make 100x their money back. Then ownership reverts back to OpenAI.
- JohnFen 4y ago> Microsoft owns 49% IIRC. Which makes Microsoft the majority shareholder. Which means that for all intents and purposes, we can consider OpenAI as a Microsoft venture now.
- 4y ago
- xiphias2 4y agoBoard of the OpenAI nonprofit: Greg Brockman Ilya Sutskever Sam Altman Adam D'Angelo Will Hurd Tasha McCauley Helen Toner Shivon Zilis Shares are not the important part here. Board memberships are controlling OpenAI Inc. If Sam Altman really wants to show that he's not doing it for money / power, he should give up his board membership.
- jjtheblunt 4y ago> If Sam Altman really wants to show that he's not doing it for money / power, he should give up his board membership. Why would he want to show anything? Maybe he likes the work.
- xiphias2 4y agoI have no problem with people wanting to get rich / powerful, just writing things like he doesn't get shares as he's not interested in money is virtue signaling, just like closed open ai. SBF showed how dangerous virtue signaling can be, as he earned a lot of trust from people for something fake, which translated to billions of dollars stolen from people who trusted him. Right now the stake is something much more powerful, and the Microsoft deal showed clearly how much he wanted to stay in control.
- jjtheblunt 4y agoThe article says he didn't write that, but some research company discovered it. > Altman didn’t take an equity stake in the company when it added the for-profit OpenAI LP entity in 2019, Semafor reported Friday.
- neom 4y agoInteresting... they're all, except Will, under 40.
- safety1st 4y agoZilis actually stepped down today. She presumably represented Musk's interests (she's an executive at Neuralink and gave birth to his twins last year via IVF). https://nypost.com/2023/03/24/shivon-zilis-mother-to-elon-musks-kids-quits-openai-board/ https://nypost.com/2023/03/24/shivon-zilis-mother-to-elon-mu...
- singularity2001 4y agoIt doesn't matter. If you create a 100 billion dollar company there is no way to escape becoming rich.
- ctvo 4y agoThis piece is just outrageous. Sam Altman, who is incredibly handsome, wealthy, and generous, did not take any equity in OpenAI. He's basically doing this work out of the goodness of his heart folks. Very similar to SBF, who also received many fluff pieces from the media, who was only making money from his crypto exchange so he could use it to change the world -- all from the goodness of their hearts. Until we find out it's not.
- catchnear4321 4y agoWhoa whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa. Spoiler tag on that last sentence please.
- kurthr 4y agoWhich last sentence: 'Altman won’t make any money on his new startup, but he’s earned himself a place in history.' and/or 'Until we find out it's not.'
- johnbellone 4y agoThe last last sentence?
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- ffwacom 4y ago[flagged]
- joshfraser 4y agoHmm, but how much does his Cayman Trust own?
- bsuvc 4y ago> While Altman’s lack of initial equity reportedly gave investors pause in 2019... Initial equity. Doesn't say anything about whether he has an agreement in place to receive future equity. Does he have any options or warrants? Is he a member of, or LP in, any organization that invested? Did the reporter not ask any follow up questions? Or was this careful phrasing ("initial equity") intentional?
- bmelton 4y ago> For Altman, it’s not about money, either. One of the most surprising things in all of this is that he does not own even a tiny piece of OpenAI, which highlights the unusual nature of this company and the entire AI industry. It's not in the cropped bit, but the original Semafor article this clips from closes with that
- threeseed 4y agoShareholders and the company will also inevitably have an Employee Share Scheme. At that point as CEO he will have equity and benefit.
- JohnFen 4y agoOr just an agreement from, say, Microsoft that once they've made a certain amount of money, Altman gets a sizeable one-time payout.
- jackblemming 4y agoI wish we had some real smart people as CEOs like Peter Norvig. Unfortunately, smart people don't like those kind of jobs. Instead we get some guy who made some "share my location" social media app and has been failing up ever since!
- EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 4y agoTangential: how can this thing be sustainable, if it uses content from various web sites, robbing them of impressions and ad revenue? Evil Google at least sends some traffic your way.