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Sam Altman owns OpenAI's venture capital fund
- peteradio 3y agoWeWork vibes
- adamnemecek 3y agoNow it's clear why he owns no OpenAI stock. I'm sensing a rug pull.
- esalman 3y agoGary Marcus was trying to bring it up a while ago: https://x.com/GaryMarcus/status/1731375497458987351?s=20 https://x.com/GaryMarcus/status/1731375497458987351?s=20
- adamnemecek 3y agoEven a broken clock is right twice a day.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- bane 3y agoI'm starting to get the feeling that there might be shenanigans going on around Sam Altman. Next thing you know, we're going to find out that his name isn't even Sam Altman, OpenAI isn't open, and all the workers have been replaced with robots a la Disney's Black Hole movie from the 1980s.
- nativeit 3y agoI don’t know if I should be telling you this, but Sam Altman’s real name is Astronaut George Santos.
- tiffanyh 3y agoRead this Reddit thread from 8-years ago. https://old.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/3cs78i/whats_the_best_long_con_you_ever_pulled/cszwpgq/?context=99 https://old.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/3cs78i/whats_the... Sam even acknowledges past shenanigans.
- re 3y agoWhen did Conde Nast/Advance Publications lose majority shareholder status for Reddit? That comment discusses it happening in 2015, but I've seen mixed citations for later dates, some claiming it still holds a majority stake. 2017: https://www.vox.com/2017/7/31/16037126/reddit-funding-200-million-valuation-steve-huffman-alexis-ohanian https://www.vox.com/2017/7/31/16037126/reddit-funding-200-mi... 2023: https://www.cnbc.com/2023/06/01/reddit-eyeing-ipo-charge-millions-in-fees-for-third-party-api-access.html https://www.cnbc.com/2023/06/01/reddit-eyeing-ipo-charge-mil... 2024: https://www.forbes.com/sites/tylerroush/2024/01/18/reddit-planning-ipo-launch-in-march-report-says/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/tylerroush/2024/01/18/reddit-pl... On the other hand, Wikipedia claims without source that AP has a 30% stake in Reddit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advance_Publications https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advance_Publications
- refurb 3y agoDon't forget the ability to spin past successes that were simply stumbled upon into a crafty narrative of where they planned the whole thing.
- neilv 3y ago> "We wanted to get started quickly and the easiest way to do that due to our structure was to put it in Sam's name," an OpenAI spokesperson tells Axios. "We have always intended for this to be temporary." Is some journalist mapping out all the financials, governance structures, and history of OpenAI, and can explain to the rest of us what it all means? Maybe especially interesting would be determining the intentions of each of the various founders and funders. (I have different snap reactions to some individual and company names involved, based on other history, but know little of their intentions with OpenAI specifically.)
- rvnx 3y agoWell, understanding intentions in few words: Andrej Karpathy was the smart and nice guy of OpenAI, and he is not there anymore.
- neilv 3y agoMy own snap assessments would be somewhat different. I'd like to understand the reality in detail, and with much more confidence than my own gut.
- ra7 3y agoMatt Levine has tried to in his own inimitable style: https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2023-11-20/who-controls-openai https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2023-11-20/who-co... https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2023-12-11/openai-s-investors-don-t-own-it https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2023-12-11/openai...
- pinkmuffinere 3y ago(https://archive.is/drJgZ https://archive.is/drJgZ and https://archive.is/cqqY4 https://archive.is/cqqY4 respectively)
- RhysU 3y agoNow I want ChatLevine, an AI filter that turns everything into Matt Levine's writing style.
- datadrivenangel 3y agoCan't make money in your non-profit? Just self-deal and have another business that you can make money on! Often illegal to do this too egregiously.
- CamelCaseName 3y agoHasn't stopped anyone before. I'm still waiting for Elon to get reamed over SolarCity. Oh wait, he never will, and will strong arm the company into giving him another 12% of TSLA.
- boringg 3y agoSolarCity? Tsla saved them when he rolled them into Tesla. Anyone who picked up TSLA shares from that purchase did significantly better than they ever would have as solarcity.
- debacle 3y agoHe might be talking about the subsidy deal with NYS that imploded.
- azemetre 3y agoIf the board allows it, why should the public care? Aren't self imploding companies good for the economy? It allows newer ones to fulfill their place.
- chinchilla2020 3y agoIt's the oldest trick in the book. The nonprofit doesn't pay taxes. Nonprofit buys it's supplies from a for-profit. You mark up the supplies and buy them from the for-profit. Organize costs so that the for-profit incurs all the costs and the non-profit gets most of the revenue.
- bugglebeetle 3y agoThis is almost certainly a form of securities fraud, however.
- russdpale 3y agoyet people around here have their heads so far up the ass of tech utopia that they worship this fool.
- jdmoreira 3y agoNot sure 'fool' means what you think it means. This guy is anything but a fool.
- dgfitz 3y agoIt's just a nice way of saying "motherfucker" I can't imagine you don't understand this.
- goodluckchuck 3y agoIt depends what definition you use. According to Webster's a fool is "a cold dessert of pureed fruit mixed with whipped cream or custard."
- dang 3y agoOk, but please don't post like this to Hacker News (irrespective of topic or person). We're trying for something else here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- totaldude87 3y agoDuring a meeting with Neumann, he scribbled out a vision for a company worth $10 trillion." ||Sam Altman’s $7 Trillion ‘Moonshot’ "Adam also owned the rights to the 'We’ trademark, which the firm decided they must own and paid the founder/CEO $US5.9 million for the rights. ||Sam Altman owns OpenAI's venture capital fund not saying this is apples to apples, but go on...
- infecto 3y agoNot even apple to oranges....that is an apple to automobiles comparison.
- 5fvu75cji75d 3y ago[dead]
- Lionga 3y agoScam Altman doing what he does best.
- debacle 3y agoParallels to Twitter pre-Musk. Altman has been controversial since his days (literally) as Reddit CEO. Yishan had some thoughts on X about the shake up at OpenAI and how they relate to Sam (and Microsoft). The capital class prefers hungry young sociopaths with flexible morals. I don't know Sam, so I can't say that he's a sociopath, but he certainly is hungry and the morals seem flexible.
- FireBeyond 3y agoWell, there was also the opaque manner in which he overnight departed YC, too.
- LoFiSamurai 3y agoWhat’s this about him being CEO of Reddit? I’m not seeing that anywhere.
- reducesuffering 3y agoYishan: https://old.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/3cs78i/whats_the_best_long_con_you_ever_pulled/cszjqg2/ https://old.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/3cs78i/whats_the... Sam Altman: https://old.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/3cs78i/whats_the_best_long_con_you_ever_pulled/cszwpgq/ https://old.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/3cs78i/whats_the...
- shrubble 3y agoBarring some kind of life-changing event (religious conversion, serious accident, birth of a child, etc.), people tend to continue on the path they were on before. I don't know enough about Altman's previous business dealings to judge, but is this part of a pattern of behavior?
- notahacker 3y agoI think the main pattern of behaviour here is that someone who realized the idealists around him believed he was switching to a profit model and licensing their tech to Microsoft out of philanthropic intent ended up assuming that they (and others) would be dumb enough to swallow the idea a $175m venture capital fund quietly spun off what is now the world's most-hyped company gave him full control and all the profits out of lack of resource to figure out any other arrangements...
- Chinjut 3y agoI am having tremendous difficulty parsing this sentence.
- notahacker 3y agoI removed a superfluous word, but it still isn't winning a Pulitzer Prize :-)
- justinclift 3y agoMaybe break it into a few smaller sentences? :)
- imtringued 3y agoYour comment is impossible to read because of some severe grammar mistakes, lack of punctuation and the fact that it is one long sentence. Here is the corrected version: Someone realized the idealists around him truly believed that he was switching to a for profit model out of philanthropic intent. That same person assumed, that the idealists would be dumb enough to let him quietly spin off a venture capital fund off the world's most hyped company. They let him get away with it (my interpretation), by giving him full control and all the profits, out of lack of resources to figure out any other arrangement.
- outside1234 3y agoScam Altman strikes again
- DANmode 3y agoPlease don't.
- fritzo 3y agoSeems like a great way incentivize the CEO to prioritize developer experience. Maybe Google could follow a similar incentive plan to improve Gemini developer experience.
- tw04 3y agoI find it interesting they keep saying “small investment”. What does that mean? By all accounts Andy Bechtolsheim made a “small investment” in Google, and it turned him into a billionaire. Even back then $100k was a rounding error in funding for a startup. I don’t care if someone thinks the amount invested was small, I care how much equity that investment resulted in.
- Havoc 3y agoWhat of it? The guy is allowed to own stuff. And at 175m commit it isn't even that big of a fund. Also not entirely convinced the author knows what a fund is. >It always had outside limited partners >it's legally owned by Altman. He controls the GP but there are at least 14 LPs. That's not what I'd call "own". https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1877240/000187724023000001/xslFormDX01/primary_doc.xml https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1877240/000187724023...
- ensignavenger 3y agoI can't even find any evidence to back the claim the Altman owns it... he is listed in that SEC filing you linked to lists him as the manager of the general partner. As CEO of OpenAI, it is exactly what I would expect to see on such a filing. The Axios article provides no source at all. It appears to be a big nothing-sandwich or maybe some sort of conspiracy to manufacture a conspiracy or something...
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- bigbuppo 3y agoIsn't that the FTX guy? Didn't think they would ever let him anywhere close to finance again.
- nohoho 3y agoSam Altman != Sam Bankman One of them is a young man with questionable ethics who pretended to be altruistic to become wildly rich. The other is involved in dodgy crypto stuff.
- qprofyeh 3y agoHm… You got me thinking, twice. It works both ways.
- imtringued 3y agoA distinction without a difference.
- yencabulator 3y agoThey are both involved in dodgy cryptocurrency[1] stuff. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worldcoin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worldcoin [1]: Don't let them steal the shorthand for cryptography from us.
- permo-w 3y agoI think it's too late for that, my friend. crypto meaning bitcoin is a word that even the idiots have come to know. in today's blessed society, no intellectual subject will supplant that
- jakupovic 3y agoCongratulations to Sam Altman, great work owning most of ChatGPT and firing people against you! Much to learn from you!
- amadeuspagel 3y agoEvery story about OpenAI is another illustration of the benefit of the standard for-profit and the way it aligns incentives.
- permo-w 3y agoor alternatively an illustration that the not-for-profit model is horrendously improperly regulated. what is the point of not-for-profit, if it immediately becomes for-profit as soon as it has anything of value?
- jgalt212 3y agoSam does deals that would make Dennis Kozlowski blush.