Sam Altman: De biografie. Over de bedenker en oprichter van OpenAI, en de race om de toekomst

by Keach Hagey

‘Deze biografie laat zien hoe Altman zijn mentor te slim af was, hij wist Musks paranoia om te zetten in enorme sommen geld en maakte OpenAI langzaam zijn eigen project. Een uitstekend en diepgravend verslag. New York Times Book Review




De eerste biografie van Sam Altman, bedenker en medeoprichter van OpenAI en een van de meest invloedrijke personen in Silicon Valley; Keach Hagey is een gelauwerd tech-journalist bij The Wall Street Journal en geeft in dit boek een fascinerende blik achter de schermen van een miljoenenbedrijf

Sam Altman is de bedenker en medeoprichter van OpenAI, het bedrijf achter ChatGPT. Toen ChatGPT eind 2022 werd gelanceerd, bereikte de app in een recordtempo meer dan 100 miljoen gebruikers. De komende jaren zal deze vorm van AI een steeds grotere rol gaan spelen in onze levens. De mogelijkheden zijn eindeloos en ongekend spannend, maar niet zonder risico’s.

Altman is ondernemer, investeerder en programmeur. Naast OpenAI, een ongeëvenaard succes, heeft hij nog een reeks andere start-ups opgericht, en hij heeft meer bedrijven onder zijn hoede. Altman is echter niet onbesproken. De afgelopen jaren kwam hij ook in het nieuws vanwege zijn rivaliteit met voormalig compagnon Elon Musk, aantijgingen van seksueel misbruik en vanwege zijn politieke ambities, die hij niet onder stoelen of banken steekt.

Keach Hagey is een gelauwerd journalist van The Wall Street Journal. In Sam Altman geeft ze een inkijk in de techwereld en laat ze zien hoe een slimme jongen een goed idee liet uitgroeien tot een van de meest invloedrijke bedrijven ter wereld.

In de pers

‘Sam Altman herinnert ons eraan dat hoe ongekend de gevolgen van AI-modellen ook mogen zijn, het verhaal van hun ontwikkeling in essentie een diep menselijk verhaal is.’

The Guardian




‘De eerste grote biografie van de nieuwste gigant uit de techwereld, dit zet een hoge standaard voor toekomstige biografieën.’ Publishers Weekly, starred review

‘Keach Hagey beschrijft op knappe wijze hoe Sam Altman denkt, opereert en macht naar zich toe trekt. Een behendige biografie van een meedogenloze onderzoeksjournalist.’ Mark Bergen, auteur van Like, Comment, Subscribe

‘Sam Altman is een bewonderenswaardige combinatie van slim onderzoek en meeslepend vertellen. Dit boek laat Sam Altman zien in al zijn charismatische en zichzelf tegensprekende facetten. Een must-read voor iedereen die bang is dat AI de maatschappij zal veranderen, of zelfs beëindigen.’ Steve Coll, winnaar van de Pulitzer Prize en auteur van o.a. De Bin Ladens en The Achilles Trap

‘Dit boek is meer dan een voortdurend onthullende biografie van de man in het centrum van het tijdperk van Silicon Valley. Het is ook een heldere geschiedenis van de techindustrie en haar machtsstructuren. Keach Hageys boek is goed gedocumenteerd en meeslepend, en het staat vol met inzichten over Sam Altmans vaak onnavolgbare beslissingen en waarom investeerders door hem betoverd lijken te worden, en nog niet eerder gedane onthullingen over zijn ontslag bij OpenAI.’ Christine Lagorio-Chafkin, auteur van We Are the Nerds

Genres: Biography, Artificial Intelligence, Business, Nonfiction, Technology, Audiobook, Science

372 pages, Kindle Edition

Published June 17, 2025

Reviews

[Matthew · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reading this book felt like taking a semester long course in 2 days, with deep knowledge about: the technological forces that led to our current AI moment, Altman’s personal life, venture capital in Silicon Valley, the way SV/the tech industry function, career advise, YCombinator, the various philosophical movements among AI safety researchers.

Some things that stood out:

- I loved how the author set up the technological forces that led to ChatGPT. First, it was Ilya and Alex’s ImageNet RNN paper that renewed interest in neural networks as the path to AGI. Then, it was realizing that LLMs were the best path after focusing on gaming and web surfing agents. Then, it was Google Brains famous “Attention is all you need” paper that introduced the transformer … which turned out to be what OpenAI needed at the moment. Finally, it was RLHF and InstructGPT to align the models.

- Altman - like Steve Jobs - has a reality distortion field. The book sets this up as both his greatest tool and worst weakness — the RDF is a spectrum from good to bad. At its best, it allowed Altman to lead the team to create machine intelligence. At its worst, it is what led to his firing by the OpenAI board and his subsequent return 5 days later (“The Blip” chapter is particularly great)

- Altman’s business prowess and interest in complex structures was really enlightening given the current profit/PNC/non-profit structure. There’s not much info about that ordeal in this book. What an interesting time to have read this book - with the announcement of OpenAI’s acquire of Jony Ive’s (of iPhone fame) LoveFrom, Altman makes his biggest public signal that OpenAI is looking to further monetize and productize it’s research. This vision strays from how OpenAI originally was set up.

- After the vignette of Altman’s wedding to his husband, the author includes a line about Alan Turing, the famous computer scientist who died by suicide because of the torment he endured for being gay. Thought this was very powerful.

The book is perfectly titled: The Optimist. Whether you think it’s bullshit or not, it’s clear Sam Altman is the chief techno-optimist. He has wide ranging interests, not just in AI: energy, housing, democracy, UBI. As the excerpt says, like it or not, Altman’s decisions will shape our digital (and physical) future. Hopefully, Altman is thoughtful as he drives us towards his techno-optimist future. I’m already excited to read part two in ~30 years.

[Mindaugas Mozūras · Rating 2 out of 5]

The way to get things done is to just be really f****** persistent.

It didn't feel like the book knew what its focus was. All the chapters are somehow related to Sam Altman - his childhood, Y Combinator, and OpenAI. Yet, at the same time, they fail to define a clear portrait of the man. The book feels more like a story of events in which Sam Altman was involved than a story about Sam Altman.

Overall, I found the book to be just ok, due to its disjointed nature. To complete a trifecta (I've previously read "More Everything Forever"), I'll read Empire of AI next.

[Fred Oliveira · Rating 4 out of 5]

Look - it's not a bad book. But it isn't quite sure what it wants to be and what angle it wants to explore. For those looking for a bit of history, that exists here. For those that want to add color to some of recent events, that's here too. But the angle I am most interested in (perspective on where OpenAI and Sam might be in terms of long-term alignment and ethics) is only just mentioned.

[Noah]

Overall solid book, although it does stray from a pure biography, and was likely marketed that way for sales and to capitalize on Altman's fame. Altman fades out of the narrative at times and is hardly mentioned at all in some chapters.

That being said it is a highly informative book with a lot of info on Altman and his backstory, and functions well as a history of Silicon Valley over the past ~20 years, as well as a brief history of the AI boom of the past ~10 years.

Altman is interesting, in part, because he got into Silicon Valley pretty much at its lowest point: Shortly after the DotCom bubble burst when money was hard to come by, and ambitious students at elite universities were not flocking to technology and start-ups the way they do now.

Altman's start-up Loopt becomes the first investment of Y Combinator, an organization which Altman eventually ends up leading. Given Y Combinator's outsize influence in Silicon Valley investment and culture, tracking Altman's rise gives you a nice history of Silicon Valley itself in that time period.

If you are like me, and did not know too much about the history of AI, or follow tech news closely then you will learn a lot. If you have followed AI and Silicon Valley very closely for a long time, then you might not take as much from this book.

[Zoë Moore · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sama may be an Optimist but he’s certainly an Opportunist.

Very well-researched, surfacing so many details about Altman’s genius but also the extent of his characteristic deal-making and gaslighting. Also gives insight on his dark family history and personal intellectual history w/ peculiar ideas of progress and advancement. It was illuminating to read about his start at YC and patterns of untrustworthiness at Loopt, his CEO roles at both of those companies there and the founding of OpenAI. I found it particularly insightful that the nonprofit structure was a convenient way for him to stay at YC and leverage its networks while it got off the ground, while also posturing the company as benefiting all of humanity and drawing in Musk. Capping returns on investment for investors also seems like the ultimate SV move to brand yourself with confidence.

The book also paints really interesting portraits of SV generally, especially the EA/safety and other AI camps and their roles within OpenAI, and their astonishing influence over public funding of AI research and lobbying power.

Great companion read to Karen Hao’s Empire of AI, which goes more in detail to recent years of OpenAI and international implications, while The Optimist is a biography of Altman.

For a wild fashion take look up Altman at the 2008 Apple conference 😃 he was going for memorable and it was definitely that

[Lucas · Rating 5 out of 5]

honest accounts

thought that this booked provided a solid review and will most likely age well. will say it is fairly unbiased reporting.

[iKasonde · Rating 5 out of 5]

a great read

An in-depth study of the founding of OpenAI, tracing it back to Sam’s upbringing and early childhood. It helps that the author had access to, via interviews, Sam to give a detailed account, including the infamous firing and returning to the helm of currently the poster child of the AI age. It’s a page-turner, managed to read it in a week. Hoping to jump on the other book by Karen Hao released the same day

[Ari Chand · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book feels like it was written by chat-gpt. A bit disappointing to read, it’s thoroughly researched and clearly a product of journalistic effort, but that effort feels like it swerved too close to reverence and propaganda. Drawing from over 200 interviews, including extensive access to Altman himself, Hagey sets out to chart his trajectory from precocious startup founder to the face of the AI revolution.

The central weakness of The Optimist lies in its lack of focus and any critical voice from the author. It’s just descriptive of what happened and steers away from giving insight to what it means. Hagey seemed torn between writing a biography of Altman, a corporate history of OpenAI, and a broad meditation on the future of artificial intelligence. Rather than interrogating the moral and social stakes of AI, the narrative often treats them as plot twists in an unfolding Silicon Valley drama. Readers hoping for insight into Sam Altman’s psychology, values, or contradictions may be disappointed. It is a book full of information, but short on illumination of AI, him as a subject, and the impacts on our collective future.

[Doug Stotland · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good time to get the origin story on Sam Altman given how quickly AI is evolving and changing lives so dramatically. The first 2/3rds is meticulous history of Sam Altman growing up that threads the gifts and behavioral pathways he was either born with, or developed early in life, through Loopt, YC and OpenAI. I found the biographer’s pattern recognition plausible and feel like I have some useful insight to make a little more sense of how Sam Altman is able to influence so many and accomplish so much. I also valued the insight into the philosophy of Sam the book suggests drives much of his urgency to create super general intelligence. “the optimist” is a great title. It describes a core tenant of his (and many other famous tech leaders of his cohort) philosophy that feels like it crosses into religion-level faith in the power and inevitability of our species’ ability to make the universe better in every way through technical ingenuity, invention and innovation. It’s an especially eerie, disconcerting faith for me when I hear how people with Altman’s power and influence kind of view fire level of influence technologies as almost evolutionary inevitable. It’s sci fi nut-jobbery IRL (reminds me of the alien worshipers in The 3 Body Problem). Oy vey.

It was a good book to read soon after the Musk bio, Nexus, Careless People and the recent Nate Silver book. Sam Altman has great influence and he’s in a hurry to change the world “for the better” forever. God love him for that and god save us. Hard for me to feel anything but optimistic about how things go for the species with people who see the world like Must, Altman, Zuck and Thiel having so much power and authority over the systems, networks and technologies that are shaping the future so fast and forcefully.

[James Mason · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really enjoyed this book. It got me a little inspired that even though the work I do is really cool (NASA science satellite development), it all becoming at risk of ending in the current political environment doesn’t mean there’s not other cool stuff out there I could work on, like AI or moon to mars. It also fully countered a wistfulness I’ve long had that the days of commercial R&D like at Bell Labs and Xerox PARC were over. Today, it’s AI labs. I ended up skipping the chapter about Sam’s parents; I’ve never found that part of biographies interesting. It also felt weird to me that the author fixated so much on his sister. Sure, all of that story is really dramatic and there’s some serious accusations there but if the point was to get a well rounded picture of the central character I don’t know why there was almost nothing about his other sibling. It seems like the drama is fits and spurts but I have no sense of if the brother has much influence in his life. There were also so many names in this book that I sometimes lost track, though that’s not the fault of the author. Recommended for sure.

[Julia Grisdela · Rating 5 out of 5]

Why isn’t this book more popular?!

Sam Altman is arguably the most powerful person alive right now. He’s the central figure driving the AI revaluation that is already reshaping global technology, economies, and labor markets.

Hagey details Altman’s circuitous path, providing context to his early life, his formative years at Y Combinator, and the philosophical bedrock that guides his decisions - a deep-seated belief in technological salvation. The Optimist goes beyond the day-to-day headlines and provides context - not only into some of Altman’s other moonshot ideas, but also into his firing from OpenAI and the details behind the elusive “not consistently candid” statement from the board.

The book does not present Altman as a deity, but as a fascinating and often contradictory blend of visionary entrepreneur, manipulative and ruthless operator, and earnest ideologue.

Highly highly highly recommend, and not just for the tech enthusiasts, but for anyone trying to understand how we got to this point with AI and where we might be going.

[Jack Welsh · Rating 2 out of 5]

I hated the first 3/4 of this book, then thought they were going to land the plane in the last 1/4 and offer a real and candid critique and tell a story of why worshipping these silcone valley billionare creatures will be the death of us all, but they take the cowards way out and offer some milque toast plea to liberalism and the promise of the enlightenment.

Pulls nearly every punch, trys to cloak itself in neutrality by highlighting personal issues instead of the relevant critiques of why this technology and the methodology of silicone valley is incredibly dangerous and in the hands of people who are not half as smart as they think they are. All I learned is expertise is field-specific and the people working on these projects are shockingly naive.

Edit: ChatGPT said this was a fair critique

[Leah · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've been anticipating this book long before I even knew it was going to be published, and thank god it did not disappoint! A well-researched, accessible, and balanced biography, with very little author interjection or opinion. A shining example of trustworthy journalism and reporting.

[Nicole · Rating 5 out of 5]

though technically a biography, I viewed this more as a story more about the past, future, and key players of AI - probably the most impactful technology of our lifetime - than of one man

so many interesting topics were explored, including:
- the alignment problem (how it evolved from the idea that AI should protect humanity somehow and be used for good, to instead merely achieve human-chosen aims most effectively, whatever those may be)
- other AI safety/ethics concerns, like value-lock (AI enshrining outdated values into public consciousness e.g. racism and sexism), harming artists, misinformation, etc.
- the often competing aims of startup / research / safety factions within a company
- the venture capital and startup ecosystem

really interesting and well-researched, didn't overly-aggrandize Altman either - painted him as wily and charismatic, someone that isn't always forthcoming or trustworthy but does seem to be a true techno-optimist with positive intentions. though the ending of the book made me worried about the direction OpenAI is going lol.

[Revrend Sunshine · Rating 1 out of 5]

Picked this out to learn more about the technology that he founded, and this is more about the business of getting the money to make companies... nothing about the tech really. It is a very flattering piece, kind of glossing over any controversies surrounding Altman and those he is associated.

[The Great White Shark · Rating 1 out of 5]

I had hoped that this book was better written than the cover suggested, it wasn't. It took about four chapters until Sam appeared in a bigger section than a small mention, like the book was actually about affordable housing and LGBTQ amongst the jewish community. In fact most of the way through the book it seems to mention everyone else except Sam most of the time. It's a cheap way to get some solid reviews, by including tech founders early success stories. She mentions that Sam at first didn't want this book to be written and only reluctantly agreed later. As always his instincts are spot on. I'm hoping The Empire Of AI will be a better read as I have been looking forward to a deep dive into Altman since LLMs first went mainstream.

[Greg Talbot · Rating 3 out of 5]

As science fiction William Gibson famously stated, 'The future is already here – it's just not evenly distributed". No where is that more true with the propulsive AI arms race. With fear and wonder, it feels like we are only at beginning of the beginning of massive societal changes. Generative AI, agentic bots, advancements in natural linguistic processing, and quantom computing are moving from the phase of ideas to product development. Like the ascendt of the world-wide net, we can traces in our time of the birth of a wider intellignece from a trillion points of computation.

Keach Hagey centers on Sam Altman's development story. He is a paragon of the millenial technologist wunderkid, and a driving force of venture capital to the R&D ventures like YC Continuity and OpenAI. We are given a proxy of the start-up education, seen through the lens of Altman's story. His confidence, and mastery of technical skills is remarkable even from the pages. We see the transition from a Stanford dorm project idead, Loopt, a mobile-location app for users, to it's development in a mentorship incubator program with Paul Graham. Ultimately he carries his disruptive innovation to mobile Carriers like Spirit and venture capitalists like Sequoia Capital.

In a book that highlights the development of people over technologies, through the story of Altman, we see the collaborative effects of Silicon Valley's insular culture. We also see the role of the Y Combinator, through the elixir of ideas, seed money and coding helped produce consumer-known firms like Stripe, Airbnb, and Doordash. Although Altman's story is prominent, mostly do to the transformative nature of ChatGPT, a large language model, trained on global compendium of shared knowledge, we are given insights into other Silicon Valley movements such as effecitve altruism, the cryptocurrency mania, fusion/nuclear power development and AI safety/regulations.

Although the book highlights fascinating aspects of Silicon Valley, I was sorely left feeling like this is an undeveloped story. Maybe it's the first iteration of a larger AI development narrative. Harsh as it may be, I don't think the book needed a 50 page intro about Sam's parents. Also, I think Altman's story needed to be grounded in the larger AI development story. Each chapter could be it's one story, but the connective tissue was weakly connected. And strangely, the book has a distanced effect from many of the key players - I never get the sense Hagey is in the room with Altman during these critical moments - it can feel sort of summarized from a second hand source and not friendly to the reader.

Often it's at the edges of the story where Hagey entices the reader the mosts. We see something of a philosophical worldview with Peter Thiel's classes. He emphasizes a push toward epochal achievement instead of gradual careerism. Paul Graham also occupies a space as a luminary, and one who helped develop many young leaders to succeed. We get some tantalizing allusions to social atmosphere of the start-up culture. The openness from traditional relationship norms (a substanial queer culture within Silicon Valley) and an openness to psychdelics to expand the capacities of the mind stand out. There are certainly a lot of out-of-the-box thought leaders like Eliezer Yudkowesky, and generations of Ayn Rand acolytes, one is left wondering - do these people relate at all those outside their bubble. By avoiding regulatory capture, and largely working in commerical spaces, they have sidestepped tradtional constraints of businesses, while having massive effects on our society. Just how resonsible they feel to the wider public seems unaddressed.

The wider problem I had is the unexamined leap of the Silicon Valley thought leaders from technical marvels to a religious ferver. We never see pushback on the hubris or insanity of some of these leaders. Consider Elon Musk's grandstanding, incivility, drug-use and anti-semetic trolling in the last six months of the Trump administration. Altman, is quite different. He is described early on as a visionary, evangelizer, the dealmaker (p.3), and though not well-developed, people share that he has political aspirations to govern. It may be well and good to leave another book to exploring the larger visions of the Silicon Valley. Space races, expansion of lifespans and building Artificial General Intelligence may be better suited for a different book. But there seems to be something deeper driving Altman and the young millenial leaders. Altman states, “Very deeply we would like this technology to tbe governed by, and benefits of it shared with everybody" (p.9). Even if Altman displays an openness, and eschews short-term profiteering, the roots of the striving seem undefined. Maybe he just hasn't lived long enough to see how his impact unfolds.

At times it can feel like I was running my finger along a scroll bar - holding my breath as Hagey describes the development of the initial Open AI product in 2020 to the masterful ChatGPT-4 version. Similarly, in the chapter the Blip, whose boardroom drama seems a little unnecessary for a general reader, Hagey describes Altman's firing and reinstatement from the OpenAI board, all with the visceral punches from a Muhammad Ali rope-a-dope combeback win. All of that can be very exciting, but we do lose the larger narrative or critical analysis of the larger AI arms race.
Neverthless, despite any reservations on the book format - Hagey does have an inside lane to the thought-leaders of Silicon Valley. I would recommend readers go to other sources for deeper understanding of technology, but this a is a great source of understanding the story of Altman and the incubators of the Silicon Valley.

[Ferhat Elmas · Rating 3 out of 5]

If you're already following innovations and chatter, there isn't much here. I wouldn't recommend, especially for anybody in the domain.

If you're non-technical and your goal is to learn how we came here, Genius Makers is better to cover the history of the neural networks and Google/DeepMind side. On the other hand, if you are FOMO and looking for something more recent and curious about the gossip about VC, YC, AI, firing of sama, etc. in one place, it's a whirlwind tour.

[Popup-ch · Rating 4 out of 5]

A biography-of-sorts about Sam Altman, the founder of OpenAI.

Sam Altman was a clever kid, who was always different from the other children. He was always happier discussing with the adults in the room, than playing with other kids.
He went to Stanford, but dropped out early to start his first company 'Loopt'. It wasn't a huge success, but it gave him an appetite for startups. He then worked with Y-Combinator to help others start companies, and eventually took over the reins after the fonder Paul Graham decided to move on to other things.

He invested in many interesting companies, but also thought 'big thoughts' - about existential problems facing humanity. He got together with a bunch of other rich Silicon Valley startup tycoons and eventually decided to start his own startup in AI, as he was worried about the possibility of superintelligence. Early investors were Elon Musk, Peter Thiel and Dustin Moskovitz, and it reads like a who's who of early 2000's Silicon Valley. Musk staked most cash, and was awarded the title of co-chair with Sam Altman. But he was too busy with his other companies to dedicate much time to the AI startup. OpenAI was staffed with equal attention to philosophers, AI experts and engineers, which proved awkward to carol, but eventually successful.

In the beginning, they looked at various different AI models, but focused on LLMs long before most others, especially after seeing the AlexNet image recognition neural network in 2012. (Even though they were still far behind Google, and had substantially less resources.)

The core technology behind GPT (Generative Pretrained Transformer) was initially developed by Google, but OpenAI doubled down on it, and brought out various releases, mostly aimed at narrow academic markets. ChatGPT was initially seen internally as nothing special, as it was just a small chat interface bolted on the existing GPT model. When it was released to the public, many on the company's board weren't even informed, and the overnight success of it took everyone by surprise.

Altman has a Reality Distortion Field, a bit like Steve Jobs, but unlike Jobs he also manages to make people think that he agrees with them. his management style is apparently to always agree with everyone, and then go and do his own thing.

The book spends a lot of time on Sam Altman's parents, but a lot less on the recent success. There is some mention of the recent ructions within the company, such as Musk's about-face suing the company for going public, as well as his short-lived ousting from OpenAI, but in general

The author has interviewed a lot of people, but not all sources are named. There's also the tragic story of his younger sister, who has had a very tragic life. The rest of the family basically disowned her, and for a while she was surviving by giving blowjobs, living in her car in Los Angeles.

[Manoj Mone · Rating 3 out of 5]

When I picked up The Optimist, I was expecting a tech biography. What I got was a layered, at times understated, yet deeply insightful look at Sam Altman — a man who has, in many ways, become the face of the modern AI era.

Written by Keach Hagey, a journalist known for sharp business reporting, the book doesn’t follow the high-drama arc of the Steve Jobs biography. It’s more subtle. More journalistic. And while it doesn’t grab you by the collar in the early chapters, it quietly earns your attention — especially as it enters Part III and IV, where the OpenAI story begins to take shape.

Is The Optimist as gripping as Walter Isaacson’s Steve Jobs? Not quite.

But it’s definitely worth reading — especially if you're in tech, AI, or startup spaces. It gives you a front-row seat to a pivotal shift in how we think about intelligence, technology, and leadership in a world racing toward the future.

Stay with it. The payoff in the later chapters is rich and thought-provoking.

Who should read this?

Startup founders looking to understand long-game leadership.

AI professionals who are interested in the origins and motivations behind OpenAI.

Tech enthusiasts who enjoy behind-the-scenes glimpses of how bold ideas turn into world-changing institutions.

Who might not enjoy it?

Readers looking for fast-paced drama or sweeping prose.

Those expecting deep technical detail — this is more about people than code.

[Jude · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the first book I've ever read about AI. So a lot of the technical pieces, things like: 1. how one of the great breakthroughs was to mimic the human brain, 2. how large language models like Chat GPT weren't expected to be so well received, because the founding goal of all those companies was just to reach GenAI, and 3. how if you want AI to be moral you have to build that into the foundational framework from the outset, were all completely new to me.

Sam Altman himself is a fascinating figure, similar to Warren Buffet in the sense that his childhood passions remained with him his whole life, in his case: things like nuclear fusion, AI, and certain social justice issues. His family issues with the accusations that his sister laid out, I found to be extremely concerning, but likely completely fabricated.

As to his career, it seems that the traits that propelled him to greatness were extreme optimism about both the ability for startups to affect huge disruption and about his own capacity to be the person to create the change. He's obviously intelligent, but to me, it's his unbounded self-confidence and ambition that launched him to such a significant position.

Lastly, if OpenAI did reach GenAI first, I have many reservations about Altman leading the company. First of all, his shift of the company from a non-profit to something completely different + his cutting out of Elon Musk, seems extremely self-serving. Also, the way he manipulated YC to foster his own non-profit ideas, when that was antithetical to what other investors and other partners in the organization wanted, I found to be quite... self-serving. Finally, his political ambitions are not inherently bad, in fact maybe he would be a great President, but it is concerning to, hypothetically, have the man who controls GenAI have a dual desire to control the country.

[Dan · Rating 4 out of 5]

A surprisingly calm book about a surprisingly dramatic guy.

The Optimist by Keach Hagey (2024, nonfiction) tracks Sam Altman from his early tech kid years through YC and into the center of the AI storm with OpenAI. It’s told clean. Feels like longform journalism, not really biography in the usual sense. It moves fast. The OpenAI stuff is front and center but there’s a lot about how Altman operates, how people respond to him, how he manages risk while always betting big. The book gives you scenes. Conversations. Those moments where things turn. Doesn’t explain too much. Just moves you along and shows you what happened.

The writing’s good. You can feel how much time Hagey spent on this. She gets out of the way mostly, lets the story work. But yeah, she likes Altman. Not full fan mode but close. I felt the bias, not in a loud way, but baked in. It didn’t bother me. Actually made it kind of more readable. She sees him as the guy who might actually change stuff and is willing to risk breaking it all to try. That comes through again and again. Didn’t always agree with the take but I didn’t need to. There’s enough space in the writing to read it your own way. It held my attention start to finish. Some parts dragged but not for long. I’d call it a strong 4.

Rating: 4 (strong)

[YH · Rating 3 out of 5]

Two books came out this year about Sam Altman and OpenAI: one was a largely depressing book criticizing OpenAI and Altman; the other focuses more on Altman's life and how he became the superstar fundraiser he is today. I would argue that both have very different messages and intentions, but due to the subject matter, both are very similar in the events that they cover.

Compared to Empire of AI, this book feels a lot more surface level as it skims the surface of how Altman became the king he is today. It does cover the same events, but the way it was written feels like a glance - for eg: the Blip was covered in one chapter and didn't feel like it was a huge turning point in Altman's life at all. Subsequent coverage of other troubles of his (the equities scandal, the ScarJo outing, etc.) were only briefly mentioned too.

The start of this book delves into Altman's early life, sprinkled with a long list of names that you could use to plot a family tree. This will go on throughout the book, which makes me wonder why the author includes some people in passing. While this is technically fine in a non-fiction book, it doesn't elaborate the impact some of these side characters have in Altman's life. It makes for a read that is reminiscent of a news report.

That said, it does give a comprehensive overview of how he grew from Loopt founder, to YC Chairman, to the OpenAI CEO he is today. We see the whole cast of people in his life and the (sometimes fleeting) role they play in his life. Interestingly, this book humanizes him a bit by talking about his tendency to date people way younger than him as well.

Overall though, it was a rather dry read that didn't give too much insight into Altman's life, much less his life as an optimist.

[Carlos Rodriguez · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book offers a solid, accessible introduction to the rapidly evolving world of AI—a field that is revolutionizing how we live and work at breakneck speed. It’s a must-read for anyone who wants to avoid falling behind and ending up in a world they no longer understand.

Sam Altman is a fascinating, complex figure, and the book doesn’t shy away from portraying his multiple personas. It paints a portrait of a man with an uncanny ability to get what he wants—sometimes by questionable means. The public’s perception of Altman is shifting fast, and it’s far too early to say how history will judge him. But he’s undeniably central to this moment in tech history, and this book helps capture that.

One of the most interesting themes is the transformation of OpenAI from a nonprofit idealist mission to what now resembles a profit-maximizing enterprise. The echoes of Google’s “don’t be evil” motto—and how far we’ve come since—are hard to miss.

In short: an easy, engaging read that feels essential in 2025.

[Skander.Karoui · Rating 4 out of 5]

The book offers a deep dive into Sam Altman and the formation of OpenAI. It's informative if you're unfamiliar with how this company was created and how the recent AI boom emerged, though at times it reads more like a Wikipedia page.

I think that the book could have taken a different approach by exploring the lessons we might learn directly from Sam Altman himself, as he's clearly an exceptionally talented individual.

For instance, it could elaborate on this quote from Paul Graham about Sam:

"What I learned from meeting Sama is that the doctrine of the elect applies to startups. It applies way less than most people think: startup investing does not consist of trying to pick winners the way you might in a horse race. But there are a few people with such force of will that they're going to get whatever they want."

A deeper exploration of this statement could provide valuable insights into Sam’s mindset and operating style, rather than just recounting his achievements.

[Alex Wilkins · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent feat of reporting, painting an image of a wily operator or sociopath, depending on how you look at him, that is behind one of the largest humanity-wide experiments ever run - ChatGPT and generative AI.

There's loads of minutiae and Silicon Valley apocrypha in here, and some of the machinations of early-stage venture capital funding rounds and complex business dealings can get a little tiring, but you could also argue that much of that is the building blocks for what came in the form of OpenAI later on.

The book is at its best when it offers real fly-on-the-wall access to recent events. The episode where Sam Altman is briefly fired, before being rehired, is told at a level of detail I haven't seen anywhere else, and it was a riveting read.

As with all books about fast-moving stories, it's not clear how much is still left to come and change, but the book gives at least a detailed view of how we got to this moment.

[Charles Reed · Rating 4 out of 5]

84. This is a highly flattering book. It has Many Great ideas. In fact, about Sam altman, who I've been curious about, I didn't realize it was a billionaire. I had questions. Why is he Doesn't have shares in his company open AI Because I said that shows? That's suspicious shows that he has a lack of resolve. It's like, no, that's not it. It's even though he's one of the founders, not only the CEO, the founder. And Here's some weird Relations, and he doesn't need the money, even though he's now using the money for other things. Sometimes just goes that way. You'll be like, you know, I really don't need the money. And then, all of a sudden, you start using the money. It's, like, oh, I actually Need the money. Now, I didn't need the money. Now, I knew I get that. So, I am on a lot of things I won't need any money, and I'll just keep building things, making other things improving life. And then all of a sudden. It's, like, yeah, I need some money, too. Now!

[Galicius · Rating 1 out of 5]

From the first sentence to the last chapter, this was a slog: a thicket of acronyms—undefined, unexplained, and unindexed. Was this written for a secret society? How is the average reader supposed to decipher “EA billionaire,” “self-described EA,” “CSET,” “Open Phil,” “CAIP,” “I/O,” or “NDA”? Context offers no clues, and the index is no help.

Then there’s the parade of dysfunction—an odyssey through the eccentricities of the so-called “crazies” that felt more alien than science fiction. Grand schemes to distribute “Worldcoin” to the needy, funded by surplus value—how noble. And yet, the spoils of this supposed altruism? A $27 million compound on Russian Hill. A $15.7 million estate in Big Sur. A 950-acre ranch in Napa. A $43 million spread on Hawaii’s Big Island. Five luxury cars, including two McLarens and a Tesla.

Is this what happens when altruism metastasizes into avarice?

[Martin · Rating 2 out of 5]

A fair piece of jounralism regarding the recent developments in machine inteligence. The book reveals how OpenAI systematically recruited Google researchers under the banner of open-source philanthropy—only to end up as a largely closed-source, for-profit entity, more or less in the belly of Microsoft.

The organization's initial positioning as humanity's champion—selling themselves as morally superior to the likes of Alphabet and Meta—is actually very sophisticated recruitment bait, and they deserve a lot of credit for that. Furthermore, credit must be given for their adept commercialization of Google's transformer architecture; they did indeed create a legendary consumer/enterprise application. Their independent innovations also deserve recognition, of course.

The way AGI is being talked about a little bit turn off for the non-radicals.

[Laura K | luonnonlukija · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 ⭐

Mielenkiintoinen ja tuhti sukellus teknologiamaailmaan! Vaikka tämän kirjan runkona kulkee Sam Altmanin tarina, oli tässä yllättävän laajasti, jopa rönsyilevästi kertomuksia myös muista henkilöistä, yritysmaailmasta ja Piilaakson verkostoista. Odotin ehkä hieman suoraviivaisempaa Sam Altmanin elämän ja tekoälyn kehityksen käsittelyä, mutta toisaalta tulipahan kurkistettua kulisseihin, mitä suuret yritysjohtajat ovat oikein touhunneet, miten he ovat päätyneet nykyiseen tilanteeseen, millä tavoin erilaiset verkostoitumiset ovat vaikuttaneet ja millaista kilpailua teknologiakehityksessä tapahtuu. Tämän lukukokemuksen jälkeen ennen kaikkea näen tekoälyn ja esimerkiksi ChatGPT:n jälleen uusin silmin ja ymmärrän maailmantilannetta paremmin.