Where did the 'father' of OpenAI get his fortune from?

Despite not owning any shares in OpenAI, Sam Altman has been able to make money from personal investments, which has helped his net worth exceed $3 billion.

Currently, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has a net worth of $3.4 billion, ranking 1,251st in the world . Photo: Reuters .

Recently, the market has been closely monitoring the initial public offerings (IPOs) of many technology companies. Most recently, OpenAI is believed to have secretly filed for an IPO with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), just a week after Anthropic made a similar move and a few days before SpaceX is scheduled to go public, according to CNBC.

Investing in OpenAI partners

OpenAI is one of the pioneering companies bringing AI to the public through ChatGPT, which has over 900 million weekly active users. This AI company is currently valued at over $850 billion and is preparing for an IPO as early as the fourth quarter of this year. Filing confidentially allows the company to submit financial reports for regulatory review before making them public to investors and the market.

Notably, the hype surrounding IPOs has also drawn public attention to the wealth of the CEOs behind these empires.

According to Forbes' billionaire rankings, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has a net worth of $3.4 billion , ranking 1,251st in the world. This figure is far behind SpaceX CEO Elon Musk and Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei – two other "giants" who have also recently filed for IPOs.

Currently, Elon Musk is the world's richest person, possessing an enormous net worth of $839 billion . If the SpaceX IPO proceeds as planned, Musk's net worth could increase by an additional $841 billion , potentially surpassing the economic size of many countries worldwide.

Even if you add up the estimated wealth of the next four richest people, including Larry Page and Sergey Brin (Google co-founders), Larry Ellison (Oracle founder), and Jeff Bezos (Amazon founder), their total wealth is only about $1.09 trillion . This is still slightly less than Musk's projected net worth.

Anthropic CEO and co-founder Dario Amodei also has a net worth of $7 billion , double that of Sam Altman. According to Forbes' estimates, when Anthropic announced its successful $65 billion fundraising with a valuation of $965 billion , the company not only surpassed its rival OpenAI (valued at approximately $852 billion ) to become the world's most valuable AI startup, but also helped more than double the net worth of its seven co-founders to approximately $16.6 billion each.

Dario Amodei, CEO and co-founder of Anthropic, has twice the net worth of Sam Altman of OpenAI. Photo: Reuters.

Surprisingly, Sam Altman doesn't own any shares in OpenAI. He revealed this at the New York Times ' DealBook Summit in December 2024. His annual salary is only about $76,001 , a rather modest figure for the head of one of the world's most valuable AI companies.

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There was much speculation that Altman might be granted a stake in the future. In 2024, Reuters reported that Altman might receive shares after OpenAI's restructuring from a non-profit to a for-profit model. But less than a week later, CNBC quoted Altman as saying he would not be accepting a "large stake" in the company.

Although he doesn't hold shares in OpenAI, Sam Altman has made his fortune from personal investments in many successful technology companies, including Stripe, Reddit, and Helion – a company developing fusion energy technology.

During the trial between Elon Musk and OpenAI, Altman revealed that the total value of his personal investments in companies doing business with OpenAI exceeded $2 billion . Of these, the investment in Helion was the most valuable. He began investing in the company around 2015, and his current stake is valued at approximately $1.65 billion .

The IPO race between OpenAI, Anthropic, and SpaceX.

OpenAI, SpaceX, and Anthropic are all pursuing plans to go public with massive valuations.

Among these, SpaceX is the company that has progressed the furthest in its IPO process. The company is expected to go public this weekend in a deal that is predicted to become the largest IPO in history, making Elon Musk the first person in the world to own assets exceeding $1 trillion .

A week ago, Anthropic also secretly filed for an IPO. Shortly before that, the company completed a funding round with a valuation of $965 billion , surpassing OpenAI's valuation of $852 billion at the end of March.

Observers believe that the market's reaction to SpaceX's IPO could significantly impact the listing plans of both Anthropic and OpenAI, as both companies are seeking to raise massive amounts of capital to expand their AI infrastructure. According to investment banks, the AI ​​company that goes public first will have a significant advantage in shaping the emerging AI industry and will have easier access to the vast capital available from investors seeking opportunities in this sector.

The IPO race among tech companies is heating up. Photo: Reuters.

The Wall Street Journal reported that OpenAI's leadership had previously expressed concerns that Anthropic might IPO before them. While still leading the consumer chatbot market, OpenAI recently failed to meet several internal revenue targets and saw Anthropic overtake it in the enterprise customer segment. Anthropic also recently surpassed OpenAI in private market valuation for the first time.

Because the company files its prospectus confidentially, most investors will have to wait until closer to the IPO date to access detailed information about OpenAI's business operations and financial situation. The confidential filing process allows the company and regulators to exchange and edit information before finalizing the official prospectus for the stock offering.

OpenAI's IPO is expected to generate massive returns for existing shareholders. Early investors include Khosla Ventures, Thrive Capital, and Microsoft. Recently, the company also completed the largest funding round in Silicon Valley history, raising $122 billion from Amazon, Nvidia, SoftBank, and many other investors.

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Despite having raised a massive amount of investment capital, OpenAI is still spending a huge amount of cash to acquire computing power, build data centers, and operate advanced AI models.

Industry experts believe that if OpenAI's IPO is successful at a valuation of around $850 billion , it would be one of the largest listings in US stock market history, marking a new phase in the global AI race between OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, and other competitors.

Source: https://znews.vn/cha-de-openai-lam-giau-tu-dau-post1658213.html