[HN Gopher] Sam Altman owns OpenAI's venture capital fund
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Sam Altman owns OpenAI's venture capital fund
Author : choppaface
Score : 204 points
Date : 2024-02-15 19:45 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.axios.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.axios.com)
| peteradio wrote:
| WeWork vibes
| medion wrote:
| Indeed indeed.
| pluc wrote:
| WeAI would arguably be a much better name
| adamnemecek wrote:
| Now it's clear why he owns no OpenAI stock. I'm sensing a rug
| pull.
| esalman wrote:
| Gary Marcus was trying to bring it up a while ago:
| https://x.com/GaryMarcus/status/1731375497458987351?s=20
| adamnemecek wrote:
| Even a broken clock is right twice a day.
| bane wrote:
| I'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 wrote:
| I don't know if I should be telling you this, but Sam Altman's
| real name is Astronaut George Santos.
| Mtinie wrote:
| _THE_ George Santos, who recently quarterbacked the Super
| Bowl winning KC Chiefs? Damn. That guy gets around.
| messe wrote:
| Any relation to a Mike Dexter?
| tiffanyh wrote:
| Read this Reddit thread from 8-years ago.
|
| https://old.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/3cs78i/whats_the...
|
| Sam even acknowledges past shenanigans.
| re wrote:
| When 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-mi...
|
| 2023: https://www.cnbc.com/2023/06/01/reddit-eyeing-ipo-
| charge-mil...
|
| 2024:
| 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
| codeflo wrote:
| Anonymous source close to the OpenAI situation, according to
| the Financial Times: "His superpower is getting people onside,
| shaping narratives, pushing situations into the shape that work
| for him."
|
| Paul Graham: "Sam is extremely good at becoming powerful."
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| Yeah, trying to read between the lines of what pg has
| said/written about sama (and obviously I'm just some rando
| bullshitting, so what do I know) it seems like he is
| genuinely in awe of a lot of Sam's capabilities, but he also
| has some real concerns about his ethics (e.g. when the report
| came out relatively recently that Sam was fired as YCom
| president).
|
| Given this background, while I might normally take the
| comment that "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" at face value, there has been enough past
| shenanigans that I don't buy that.
| boringg wrote:
| Well there is the whole debacle last year at openAI. Im
| starting to get those weird vibes and his history is a bit
| spotty.
| archy_ wrote:
| It really is impressive how some people seem to be able to
| embed themselves so well in an industry. Not many people have
| the drive to pull it off, even fewer have the circumstances.
| robofanatic wrote:
| Is he himself the 1 person unicorn
|
| https://fortune.com/2024/02/04/sam-altman-one-person-
| unicorn...?
| foxmoss wrote:
| Next thing to comes out is that Sam Altman never headed Y
| Combinator.
| neilv wrote:
| > _" 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 wrote:
| Well, understanding intentions in few words:
|
| Andrej Karpathy was the smart and nice guy of OpenAI, and he is
| not there anymore.
| neilv wrote:
| My 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 wrote:
| Matt Levine has tried to in his own inimitable style:
|
| https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2023-11-20/who-co...
|
| https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2023-12-11/openai...
| pinkmuffinere wrote:
| (https://archive.is/drJgZ and https://archive.is/cqqY4
| respectively)
| RhysU wrote:
| Now I want ChatLevine, an AI filter that turns everything
| into Matt Levine's writing style.
| datadrivenangel wrote:
| Can'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 wrote:
| Hasn'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 wrote:
| SolarCity? 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 wrote:
| He might be talking about the subsidy deal with NYS that
| imploded.
| azemetre wrote:
| If 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 wrote:
| It'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 wrote:
| This is almost certainly a form of securities fraud, however.
| voakbasda wrote:
| That only matters if the government has the ability to
| prosecute it successfully, but I would posit that most
| fraud does not even get investigated.
| jmalicki wrote:
| This is how IKEA has been operating forever.
|
| https://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/012216/how-
| i....
| ensignavenger wrote:
| What exactly would that accomplish? The For Profit would have
| to pay a ton of taxes on all that revenue if the non-profit
| incurred all the costs!
| lupire wrote:
| Net revenue minus taxes is profit.
| russdpale wrote:
| yet people around here have their heads so far up the ass of tech
| utopia that they worship this fool.
| jdmoreira wrote:
| Not sure 'fool' means what you think it means. This guy is
| anything but a fool.
| dgfitz wrote:
| It's just a nice way of saying "motherfucker" I can't imagine
| you don't understand this.
| goodluckchuck wrote:
| It 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 wrote:
| Ok, 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
| totaldude87 wrote:
| During 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 wrote:
| Not even apple to oranges....that is an apple to automobiles
| comparison.
| Lionga wrote:
| Scam Altman doing what he does best.
| dang wrote:
| Please don't post unsubstantive comments.
|
| You may not owe $celebrity or $billionaire better, but you owe
| this community better if you're participating in it.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| Alifatisk wrote:
| Amen
| debacle wrote:
| Parallels 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 wrote:
| Well, there was also the opaque manner in which he overnight
| departed YC, too.
| LoFiSamurai wrote:
| What's this about him being CEO of Reddit? I'm not seeing that
| anywhere.
| reducesuffering wrote:
| Yishan: https://old.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/3cs78i/wh
| ats_the...
|
| Sam Altman: https://old.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/3cs78
| i/whats_the...
| shrubble wrote:
| Barring 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 wrote:
| I 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 wrote:
| I am having tremendous difficulty parsing this sentence.
| notahacker wrote:
| I removed a superfluous word, but it still isn't winning a
| Pulitzer Prize :-)
| johneth wrote:
| > I don't know enough about Altman's previous business dealings
| to judge
|
| He's involved in the eye scanning shitcoin 'Worldcoin'.[0]
| Personally, I assume anyone involved in crypto has suspicious
| motives at best.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worldcoin
| outside1234 wrote:
| Scam Altman strikes again
| fritzo wrote:
| Seems 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 wrote:
| I 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 wrote:
| What 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/1877240/000187724023...
| ensignavenger wrote:
| I 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...
| bigbuppo wrote:
| Isn't that the FTX guy? Didn't think they would ever let him
| anywhere close to finance again.
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