You might be shocked to find out that OpenAI CEO Sam Altman only makes around $76,000 a year from his job despite being one of the most important people in the tech world - but there's a good reason for it.
Much of the tech world is linked to extraordinary amounts of money, whether that be the multi-trillion dollar values of key companies, the big funding that certain organizations get from the government, or the ballooning net worth of major names like Elon Musk.
Sam Altman, however, has somewhat of a different approach, as reports from Bloomberg indicate that he takes a salary of just $76,001 from his role as CEO of OpenAI, and also holds absolutely zero equity in the company.
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The latter is perhaps the most major part, as that's where most big tech CEOs earn their fortunes.
As per CNBC Make It, Jeff Bezos has only ever taken a similarly 'small' salary of $81,840 for decades now, but has become the second richest man in the world due to the large portion of Amazon equity he owns.
Some aren't quite as 'selfless' when it comes to salary as Altman or Bezos though, as Elon Musk for example was recently denied a $56 billion salary package for his role at Tesla, but I guess you don't get to be the richest person on the planet in any other way.
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What's significant about Altman's refusal to take equity from OpenAI though is that even just 1% of the company would net him a net worth increase of around $34 billion, as recent reports suggest that the ChatGPT creator is valued at around $340,000,000,000.
That 1% stake alone would make him instantly the 50th richest person in the world, and you'd have to imagine that he'd have a larger portion of the company than that, considering he was one of it's founders and current CEO.
He refused to take any stake due to the non-profit nature of the company though, which required a majority disinterested board. He has still turned down any future equity though despite the company's implementation of a for-profit arm, which has recently earned its own controversy after Musk sued OpenAI.
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Altman revealed that it's not about the money when it comes to his role at OpenAI, and instead he's simply happy to fulfil a "childhood dream job" where he gets to "sit in the room with the smartest researchers in the world and go on this crazy adventure."
It would be remiss to act like he's not already stacked with cash though, as he earned more than enough through his startup accelerator company Y Combinator, and continues to bank money through his investments in major companies like Reddit and Stripe, alongside venture capital funds like Hydrazine Capital and Apollo Projects.
Bloomberg estimates that Altman's net worth was around $2 billion in early 2024, but he could easily be among the richest if he took similar measures to almost all of his contemporaries in the world of tech.