Sam Altman’s lore is being put to the test.
He was such a natural-born winner that famed Silicon Valley investor Paul Graham once said of Altman: “You could parachute him onto an island full of cannibals and come back in five years and he’d be king.”
Now, the cannibals are at the door.
Altman’s leadership as CEO of OpenAI is in the spotlight; The growth story of the company he built is facing scrutiny ahead of the IPO; And his home in San Francisco was recently attacked. Bringing it all to a head: Last week a civil lawsuit began in federal court, where Elon Musk is trying to oust his former partner Altman, and derail OpenAI’s go-to-public ambitions.
What happens in the coming weeks and months will define Altman’s legacy. Will he be remembered as the musky, glass-eating founder of his era who overcame great odds to prove everyone wrong? Or will he become like Travis Kalanick, a brilliant entrepreneur who was caught in the middle of scandals before Uber Technologies went public and rewarded investors who were worried he wasn’t the guy to land the plane despite everything already being accomplished.
It’s a strange turn for Altman, a man who just months ago planned to build OpenAI through a series of interconnected tech-industry deals that were too big to fail.
The future Lord of the Universe was having difficulty managing even his own schedule – let alone his own narrative. On Tuesday, Altman was supposed to celebrate a deal at a gala event in downtown San Francisco hosted by Amazon Web Services. Instead, he was across the bay in Oakland, California, to open arguments in the Musk trial.
“I wish I could be there with you in person today,” Altman told the Amazon audience via a video message recorded on a giant screen. “Ugh, my schedule got taken away from me.”
Things are moving away from Altman in more ways than one. Now, the question is whether Altman is the right person to take OpenAI to the next level.
This is especially poignant as the company’s bitter AI rival Anthropic is capturing market share and seeing rapidly rising valuations in the race for OpenAI to go public.
And then my colleague Berber Jin reports that OpenAI missed its own revenue target. That’s a particularly troubling sign for a company whose investors are expecting massive growth to justify its recent $852 billion valuation. (In response to the report, OpenAI Chief Financial Officer Sarah Fryer told Bloomberg News, “We feel we are executing our plan at the highest level.”)
News Corp., owner of The Wall Street Journal, has a content-licensing partnership with OpenAI.
We have seen such dramas happening before also. As one of Silicon Valley’s hot tech players is on the verge of going public, it’s a payday for all those who gambled on its once unexpected success, which somehow turned out to be… and then trouble.
Musk knows this kind of moment. He has lived his own version of it.
For Tesla, his dream could have easily been shattered. In 2008, some on the Tesla board questioned his tenure as CEO.
It’s easy to imagine how the company, which was struggling at the time, might have gravitated toward becoming a battery-pack supplier instead of continuing on the path that would eventually make it the world’s most valuable car company.
Yet Musk showed courage and his philosophy was born.
Part of Musk’s story was described in the opening debate Tuesday. “His own personal story is quite compelling,” Musk’s lawyer told the jury.
The early days of a startup have a way of turning early partners into enemies. (Musk doesn’t have nice things to say about one of Tesla’s co-founders.)
In this case, Musk and Altman created OpenAI as a nonprofit. Along the way, the two fell out and Altman created a profitable subsidiary.
OpenAI’s lawyers have denied wrongdoing. They argue that Musk knew he needed a for-profit arm to raise money and recruit talent, and that the lawsuit is motivated by competition. Years after breaking away from OpenAI, Musk developed his own profit-driven AI ambitions through XAI, now part of SpaceX, which is also preparing for an IPO.
For Musk, the stakes in this case may be as much about financial considerations as it is about vanity — though he is seeking damages in excess of $180 billion. While some legal scholars believe the odds are against his victory, Musk has already won in many ways. He has spent the last two years branding his former partner as “Scam Altman” – the AI-era flimflam man.
Of course, both men came to trial with burdens – that’s essentially what the judge said.
And Musk didn’t disappoint those who viewed him as a “world-class jerk,” as one juror described him in a questionnaire before the trial. At times, Musk spent his days on the witness stand looking thin.
He may be a villain to some people. But Musk’s lore still lies in the element of surprise. Say what you want about his politics; The Tesla Model Y moves like a bird-dog on the hunt. Their actions may seem strange, but their discovery of renewable rockets has helped rekindle the humanities’ dreams for space and beyond.
Like Musk, Altman, who is expected to testify in late May, has adopted a similar habit of talking about the bright future made possible by technology. However, his record of changing the world is less clear.
Instead, Altman has increasingly become the embodiment of AI technology. For some, this is good. For others, Altman is coming up with something not surprising, but worrying.
Beyond testing, the lasting risk to OpenAI, which Musk has gladly helped promote, is concerns that Altman can’t be trusted.
You can hear its echoes far away from the court.
As I reviewed Tuesday’s events at a bar near Altman’s home in San Francisco’s Russian Hill neighborhood, I couldn’t help but overhear the conversation. A tech bro was explaining his concerns about AI and job security to the bartender. “Sam Altman,” the man announced for all to hear, “he’s actually the devil.”
It was another reminder that Altman’s lore is still being written.
Write to Tim Higgins at tim.higgins@wsj.com
