Person

Sam Altman

60 entries · May 2020 – July 2026

Sam Altman is the chief executive of OpenAI and, since ChatGPT arrived in late 2022, the industry's most visible spokesman for commercial AI. He ran the accelerator Y Combinator before taking over the lab, and steered its shift from a research outfit to a company whose products reach hundreds of millions of people. His tenure has been turbulent: the board briefly ousted him in November 2023 before staff pressure returned him within days, and by 2026 he was fighting Elon Musk's lawsuit over OpenAI's origins — dismissed by a jury that May — while the company completed a restructuring that kept its founding nonprofit in control. Admirers credit his fundraising and product instincts; critics question how much independent oversight sits above him.

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  • Labs & people 23
  • Money & business 13
  • Models & capabilities 12
  • Courts & copyright 10
  • Government & policy 8
  • Safety & alignment 8
  • Ideas & essays 8
  • Culture & impact 6
  • Benchmarks & progress 4
  • Compute & infrastructure 3
  • Security & misuse 1
  • Open weights & ecosystem 1

  1. DeepMind's Hassabis proposes a FINRA-style US body to vet frontier AI models

    Sam Altman, Elon Musk, Satya Nadella and Anthropic's Jack Clark all publicly praised the proposal, an unusual moment of agreement among rival lab leaders.

    Government & policy · Safety & alignment · Ideas & essays

  2. White House to individually approve customer access to GPT-5.6 ahead of release

    OpenAI said it sent the government a list of proposed customers for feedback without being told the approval criteria; a bipartisan policy group called the process 'ad hoc and potentially lawless.'

    Government & policy · Models & capabilities

  3. OpenAI publishes plan for ensuring AGI benefits everyone

    Sam Altman and Jakub Pachocki set three goals for what they called OpenAI's third phase, including a personal AGI for every person and an automated AI researcher by March 2028.

    Ideas & essays

  4. Florida sues OpenAI and Sam Altman over ChatGPT safety practices

    The 83-page complaint names Altman personally, brings ten counts including product liability and public nuisance, and follows a criminal probe into a fatal FSU campus shooting.

    Courts & copyright · Safety & alignment

  5. Jury dismisses Musk's lawsuit against OpenAI and Altman

    The jury took under two hours to decide Musk's claims fell outside a three-year statute of limitations, without ruling on whether the alleged breach of trust actually occurred.

    Courts & copyright · Labs & people

  6. Musk v Altman/OpenAI trial begins

    Musk sought as much as $134bn in damages to be paid to OpenAI's charity, plus Altman's removal from the board, in a case tried before a nine-member advisory jury in Oakland.

    Courts & copyright · Money & business · Labs & people

  7. OpenAI publishes 'Our principles'

    The document replaced the 2018 charter's pledge to stop building AGI if a rival got there more safely, reframing OpenAI's mission around broad access rather than a race to a finish line.

    Labs & people

  8. Musk drops most claims against OpenAI and Altman ahead of trial

    Musk narrowed his suit from 26 claims to two — unjust enrichment and breach of charitable trust — after Judge Gonzalez Rogers granted his request to streamline the case.

    Courts & copyright

  9. Molotov cocktail thrown at Sam Altman's home; second incident days later

    Police said the suspect carried a note listing other AI executives as targets; two days later two more people were arrested after gunfire near the same house.

    Culture & impact · Safety & alignment

  10. ARC Prize Foundation launches ARC-AGI-3

    Humans scored 100% and frontier AI scored 0.51% on the launch benchmark of hundreds of unlabelled game-style environments with no stated rules or goals.

    Benchmarks & progress

  11. OpenAI prepares for possible 2026 IPO

    Chief financial officer Sarah Friar hired former DocuSign chief Cynthia Gaylor for investor relations, while OpenAI told staff ChatGPT needed to become a 'mission-critical' business tool.

    Money & business

  12. OpenAI signs agreement with the Department of War for classified-network use

    Announced hours after Anthropic was barred from federal contracts, the deal let Pentagon use OpenAI's models 'for all lawful purposes'; Altman later called the timing 'rushed'.

    Government & policy · Security & misuse

  13. Trump orders federal government to cut ties with Anthropic

    Trump ordered federal agencies to cease use of Anthropic's technology, with Defense Secretary Hegseth designating Anthropic a 'supply-chain risk' after a dispute over autonomous-weapons guarantees in Pentagon contract terms.

    Labs & people · Government & policy

  14. Unsealed filing details OpenAI's account of the Musk restructuring dispute

    The filing said Musk had sought majority equity control and roughly $80bn for a self-sustaining Mars city; Altman posted the claim publicly on X the same day.

    Courts & copyright · Labs & people

  15. OpenAI updates ChatGPT image generation to GPT Image 1.5

    OpenAI moved the launch up from a planned January date, part of a competitive scramble after Google's Gemini 3 and its 'Nano Banana Pro' image tool led leaderboards.

    Models & capabilities

  16. OpenAI releases GPT-5.2

    Released three weeks after Google's Gemini 3 and following a reported internal OpenAI 'code red,' with a claimed 70.9% win rate against professionals on the GDPval benchmark, up from 38.8% for GPT-5.1.

    Models & capabilities

  17. Sam Altman declares internal 'Code Red' at OpenAI over Gemini 3 competition

    Altman told staff to prioritise ChatGPT quality and delay planned advertising and shopping features, weeks after Google's Gemini 3 outperformed OpenAI's models on several benchmarks.

    Labs & people

  18. OpenAI's annualised revenue run rate crosses $20bn in 2025

    Altman's figure nearly doubled the $13bn CFO Sarah Friar had projected for the year just two months earlier, against more than $1.4tn in announced infrastructure commitments.

    Money & business

  19. Ilya Sutskever's deposition reveals details of the 2023 OpenAI board conflict

    Sutskever testified that most of the allegations behind his 52-page memo against Altman came secondhand from Mira Murati and were never independently verified.

    Labs & people

  20. OpenAI says ChatGPT reaches 800 million weekly active users

    Altman gave the figure at OpenAI's DevDay keynote, up from roughly 400 million in February 2025 — a doubling in eight months, alongside 4 million developers building on the API.

    Culture & impact · Money & business

  21. OpenAI's third DevDay: AgentKit, Apps SDK and Codex general availability

    OpenAI opened ChatGPT to third-party apps built on the Model Context Protocol and shipped a visual agent-building toolkit, while Altman disclosed 800 million weekly ChatGPT users.

    Models & capabilities

  22. OpenAI launches ChatGPT Pulse

    Generated overnight from chat history, memory and connected apps like Gmail and Calendar, the feature launched only for Pro subscribers on iOS and Android.

    Models & capabilities

  23. GPT-5 launches to a backlash over the model it replaced

    OpenAI withdrew GPT-4o and other older models the same day; a routing fault made GPT-5 seem weaker, and paying users' objections forced 4o's return.

    Models & capabilities · Culture & impact · Benchmarks & progress

  24. Tech Oversight Project and Midas Project publish 'The OpenAI Files' governance report

    Drawing on over 200 sources including former employees, the report accused Altman of self-dealing and objected to plans that would loosen the nonprofit board's control.

    Labs & people

  25. Sam Altman publishes 'The Gentle Singularity'

    Altman declared 'we are past the event horizon' of the singularity, predicting novel-insight-generating systems in 2026 and real-world robots by 2027.

    Ideas & essays

  26. OpenAI buys Jony Ive's hardware startup for about $6.5 billion

    The all-equity deal for io brought roughly 55 staff, many former Apple designers, to build a screenless AI device Altman and Ive said would ship in 2026.

    Money & business · Labs & people

  27. Fidji Simo joins OpenAI as CEO of Applications

    OpenAI's chief operating, financial and product officers were realigned to report to Simo rather than Altman, who said the change freed him to focus on research, compute and safety.

    Labs & people

  28. US Senate Commerce Committee holds hearing on AI competitiveness with Sam Altman

    Witnesses from OpenAI, Microsoft, AMD and CoreWeave asked instead for faster permitting, energy access and calibrated export controls to help the US 'run faster' than China.

    Government & policy

  29. OpenAI abandons plan to convert to full for-profit control, nonprofit to keep control

    The for-profit arm still becomes a public benefit corporation, but after talks with California and Delaware's attorneys general the nonprofit keeps its controlling stake.

    Labs & people · Money & business

  30. OpenAI countersues Musk, alleging harassment campaign

    OpenAI called Musk's $97.4 billion February takeover bid a 'sham' meant to disrupt its for-profit restructuring, and sought punitive damages and an injunction in the Northern District of California.

    Courts & copyright

  31. OpenAI seeks public feedback ahead of open-weight model release

    OpenAI posted a feedback form and announced developer sessions in San Francisco, Europe and Asia-Pacific rather than a launch date, saying key decisions were still open.

    Open weights & ecosystem

  32. OpenAI adds native image generation to GPT-4o

    Images were generated natively by GPT-4o's own architecture rather than by a separate diffusion model, improving text rendering and editing of existing images.

    Models & capabilities

  33. CoreWeave signs $11.9bn AI infrastructure deal with OpenAI; OpenAI takes $350m stake

    The Nvidia-backed cloud provider's deal came weeks before its Nasdaq listing, and added to OpenAI's existing compute arrangements with Microsoft, Oracle and the Stargate venture.

    Compute & infrastructure · Money & business

  34. Judge denies Musk's bid to block OpenAI's for-profit conversion

    Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers called the underlying charitable-trust question a 'toss-up' but offered an expedited trial for the autumn given the public interest at stake.

    Courts & copyright

  35. The Stargate Project announces $500 billion for AI infrastructure

    OpenAI, SoftBank and Oracle pledged $500 billion over four years for US data centres, announced from the White House.

    Compute & infrastructure · Money & business

  36. OpenAI announces o3 and opens early access for safety testing

    Reported scores included 96.7% on the AIME maths exam and a Codeforces rating in the 99.2nd percentile; OpenAI cited o1's link between reasoning and deception as a reason to delay release.

    Models & capabilities · Benchmarks & progress

  37. OpenAI publishes the Sora system card

    Published alongside Sora's public launch, it disclosed testing by red-teamers in nine countries on more than 15,000 generations, and that the model still struggles with realistic physics.

    Safety & alignment · Models & capabilities

  38. Mira Murati and two research leaders quit OpenAI on the same day

    Murati cited wanting time for her own exploration; she went on to found Thinking Machines Lab, and Altman called the departures independent and amicable.

    Labs & people

  39. Reuters reports OpenAI plans to convert to a for-profit structure

    Report says Altman would receive a stake for the first time and the nonprofit board would lose its controlling role, a plan not finalised until late 2025.

    Labs & people · Money & business

  40. Sam Altman publishes 'The Intelligence Age' essay

    Altman wrote that superintelligence could arrive within 'a few thousand days,' framing scaling deep learning as an already-solved algorithmic problem needing only more compute.

    Ideas & essays

  41. Helen Toner gives first detailed public account of the OpenAI board's decision to fire Altman

    Toner said the board first learned of ChatGPT's launch from Twitter and that Altman tried to have her removed after she co-wrote a critical paper.

    Labs & people

  42. OpenAI's board forms a Safety and Security Committee

    Chaired by board chair Bret Taylor and including CEO Sam Altman as a member, the committee had 90 days to review safety practices before recommending changes to the full board.

    Safety & alignment · Labs & people

  43. OpenAI pulls ChatGPT voice after Scarlett Johansson says it copied her from 'Her'

    Altman had asked Johansson to voice ChatGPT in September 2023; she declined, and said she was 'shocked' when a nearly indistinguishable voice, Sky, shipped anyway.

    Culture & impact · Courts & copyright

  44. OpenAI's exit agreements are found to claw back equity

    Vox reported departing staff had to sign lifetime non-disparagement terms within 60 days or lose vested equity potentially worth millions; Altman said he had not known.

    Labs & people · Culture & impact

  45. Jan Leike resigns and the superalignment team dissolves

    Leike said his team had been 'sailing against the wind' for compute and access; OpenAI reassigned remaining members rather than replacing the team's leadership.

    Labs & people · Safety & alignment · Ideas & essays

  46. OpenAI board's review concludes, Altman and Brockman to continue leading OpenAI

    WilmerHale's inquiry found Altman's November 2023 removal was not about safety, security, finances or statements to investors, and three new directors joined the board.

    Labs & people

  47. OpenAI responds to Elon Musk's lawsuit over its founding mission

    OpenAI said Musk had contributed $45 million rather than the $1 billion he pledged, and published emails in which he proposed merging OpenAI into Tesla or taking full control.

    Courts & copyright · Labs & people

  48. Musk sues OpenAI over its for-profit turn

    The complaint alleged a founding pact to develop AGI 'for the benefit of humanity' had been broken for Microsoft's profit; OpenAI said no such agreement existed.

    Courts & copyright · Labs & people

  49. Sam Altman returns as CEO with a new initial board

    The three-person interim board — Bret Taylor, Larry Summers and Adam D'Angelo, the only holdover from the board that fired him — replaced the four who had voted him out.

    Labs & people

  50. OpenAI's board fires Sam Altman, and reinstates him five days later

    The board cited a loss of confidence but gave no detail; around 700 of roughly 770 employees threatened to resign, and the board itself was replaced.

    Labs & people · Money & business

  51. OpenAI's first DevDay ships GPTs and an Assistants API

    GPT-4 Turbo cut input pricing to a cent per thousand tokens and extended context to 128,000 tokens; the promised GPT Store did not open until 2024.

    Models & capabilities · Money & business

  52. Schumer convenes tech chief executives behind closed doors

    About two-thirds of the Senate attended; press and public were excluded, and no senator was permitted to ask a question.

    Government & policy

  53. Lab leaders sign a one-sentence statement on extinction risk

    "Mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war."

    Ideas & essays · Safety & alignment

  54. OpenAI publishes 'Governance of superintelligence'

    Altman, Brockman and Sutskever predicted AI would exceed expert skill 'in most domains' within a decade and called an outright pause unenforceable.

    Ideas & essays · Government & policy

  55. Sam Altman asks the Senate to regulate his industry

    He proposed a federal agency able to license and de-license frontier models above a capability threshold, then declined to lead it himself.

    Government & policy

  56. OpenAI releases GPT-4

    A multimodal model that passed professional exams near the top of the human range — and whose technical report disclosed no architecture, data or compute.

    Models & capabilities · Benchmarks & progress

  57. Sam Altman publishes 'Planning for AGI and beyond'

    Altman argued for iterative deployment of ever more capable systems rather than a single high-stakes release, while naming misaligned superintelligence as a serious risk.

    Safety & alignment · Ideas & essays

  58. Microsoft invests a reported $10 billion in OpenAI

    Microsoft's own announcement gave no figure; press reports put the deal at $10 billion and described Azure becoming OpenAI's exclusive cloud provider.

    Money & business · Labs & people

  59. OpenAI launches ChatGPT

    A free web interface to an existing GPT-3.5 model, reported by one analysis to have reached 100 million monthly users within two months.

    Models & capabilities · Culture & impact

  60. Microsoft reveals the supercomputer it built for OpenAI

    Announced at Build, a top-five ranked machine dedicated to a single customer — an early signal of AI's compute economics.

    Compute & infrastructure · Money & business

Also mentioned in 15 entries

Referenced in passing — Sam Altman isn't the main subject of these.