The presentation of sam altmanCEO of Open AI, before the United States Senate Judiciary Committee has been one of the great topics of the week. The businessman not only spoke about the present and the future of artificial intelligence, but also raised the need to move forward with its regulation. But the exchange with the senators on the panel was not without its awkward moments, especially when talking about money.
In fact, Altman remarked that he does not have any type of shareholding in OpenAI. That is to say, that he does not own the artificial intelligence laboratory —or even a part of it—, and that he is not increasing his fortune thanks to the frenzy of tools such as ChatGPT or DALL-E.
The San Francisco startup leader’s clarification emerged after a comment —rather sour, by the way—of Senator John Neely Kennedy of Louisiana. “He’s making a lot of money, right?”, shot the congressman outlining a smile. Sam Altman’s response was instantaneous, albeit accompanied by a surprised expression: “No. They pay me enough to cover my health insurance and I have no shares in OpenAI”.
However, the exchange did not end there. “Really? How interesting. You need a lawyer or a representative,” Kennedy joked, drawing laughter from the room and implying that the businessman was letting a very lucrative opportunity slip away. After all, today the laboratory has a valuation of around 30,000 million dollars. The response from the CEO of OpenAI was simple: “I do this because I love it”.
This is not the first time that it has been questioned whether or not Sam Altman has a shareholding in OpenAI. In fact, the biggest speculation arose this year after Microsoft, which was already investing in the startup, announced that it would deepen its alliance with Californians. However, on previous occasions it has been the businessman himself who has denied exercising any type of ownership over the artificial intelligence laboratory.
Sam Altman and his participation in OpenAI
It is worth remembering that OpenAI today is divided into two entities. On the one hand, OpenAI Incorporated, which was founded in late 2015 as a non-profit organization. For the other, OpenAI LP, a for-profit subsidiary that has been defined as “a company with limited profits.” The latter was created in 2019, after the departure of Elon Musk, in order to attract investors and financing.
“The fundamental idea of OpenAI LP is that investors and employees can earn a limited return if we are successful in our mission, which will allow us to raise investment capital and attract employees with startup-like engagement. But any return we exceeds that amount—and if we’re successful, we expect to generate orders of magnitude more than we should to the people who invest in or work on the OpenAI LP—will be owned by the original OpenAI nonprofit entity,” they explained those of Sam Altman at the time.
As it is, the equity of OpenAI LP was distributed among its employees and managers after its creation. However, Sam Altman opted not to take a stake. This explained it traffic light In an interesting report he published last March:
“Altman also made an unusual decision for a boss in the tech sector: not to take shares in the new for-profit entity, according to people familiar with the matter. Altman was already extremely wealthy, having invested in several highly successful tech start-ups. And he didn’t need the money.
He also believed that the company needed to become a business to continue his work, but he told people that the project was not designed to make money. Avoiding any ownership interest would help you stay aligned with the original mission. But that decision actually scared off some potential investors in OpenAI, who were concerned that Altman would see no upside in the project.”
Sam Altman’s comments about his non-stock ownership in OpenAI have gained notoriety at a peculiar time. In the last few hours, an investigation has called into question the figures that Elon Musk claims to have donated to the laboratory in its early years. It ensures that It wouldn’t be 50 or 100 million dollarsas the tycoon has said, but something like $15 million.