The OpenAI chief said Peter Thiel and Paul Graham shaped his investing approach, which favors overlooked opportunities over crowded trades and has backed about 400 companies.
Sam Altman, whose wealth is not tied to OpenAI because he owns no equity in the company and has historically taken a salary of roughly $76,000 a year, has amassed a net worth of more than $3.3 billion. In a recent interview on the Invest Like The Best podcast, released last week, he said venture capitalists Peter Thiel and Paul Graham taught him to look for investments that are not obviously popular, arguing that the best opportunities are rarely the ones everyone is chasing. Altman said that approach has shaped two decades in Silicon Valley, where he and his venture funds now hold stakes in about 400 companies, including early bets on Reddit, Airbnb and Stripe. Forbes said one of his largest positions is a $1.65 billion stake in Helion, the nuclear fusion firm he first backed around 2015. Altman’s path in the Valley began with Loopt, the location-sharing startup he founded after dropping out of Stanford University in 2005. Graham, who cofounded Y Combinator, became an early investor in Loopt and later recruited Altman to lead the accelerator. After selling Loopt in 2012, Altman launched Hydrazine, his first venture fund, with billionaire Peter Thiel as the largest outside investor. Altman later served as Y Combinator’s president from 2014 to 2019. The article also cites Thiel and Warren Buffett on the importance of independent thinking and emotional discipline in investing, with Buffett warning in 2010 that investors who panic when others are fearful are unlikely to make much money over time.