October 6, 2025

OPENAI could soon be the most precious private company, but the net value of Sam Altman will not shake, because the CEO does not hold equity and earns only $ 76,001 per year

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The AI ​​race is one of the most popular business wars this decade, the market which should be worth 4.8 billions of dollars by 2033. And Openai was a favorite in the fierce battle, with chatgpt amassing 800 million active users, according to CEO Sam Altman.

It is now about to become the most precious company in the world, with talks to sell $ 6 billion in equity that would increase its $ 500 billion, against its $ 300 billion assessment in March after a infusion of $ 40 billion in donors like Microsoft and Softbank. This Leap would see Openai exceeding SpaceX from Elon Musk, which currently exceeds all other private companies at 350 billion dollars.

However, even if Openai performs the evaluation worthy of envy, you probably do not reach Altman shooting the list of billionaires on the back. The CEO is currently earning a salary of $ 76,001, up slightly compared to $ 73,546 in 2022, to lead the pioneer technology company. The boss of billionaire technology said he was doing “regardless of the minimum for health insurance”, according to the New York Times– But more surprising, has zero equity in Openai.

At one point, he had an indirect participation “completely insignificant” in the company through a VC fund supported by Sequoia associated with Y combinator. But an Openai spokesperson told Techcrunch that the share would have been less than a fraction of one percent and would have already been sold for an undisclosed amount.

Altman’s lack of equity is quite unusual; Most CEOs have a skin in the game, standing to make great victories or overwhelming losses depending on how they lead their businesses. But he has other tips in his sleeve to bring the bacon back home.

Fortune contacted Openai to comment.

Altman is a billionaire with a salary of $ 76,001. Here’s how he has his fortune

It is not because Altman does not have a part of Openai that he lives on the pay check on his modest salary of the CEO. The 40 -year -old technological entrepreneur currently has a net value of $ 1.9 billion – much lower than the CEO of the company he tries to exceed, because Musk seated a fortune of $ 410 billion. But he has always accumulated an important nest egg thanks to his various investments in several industries.

Altman is a major of Helion Energy support, a nuclear fusion startup where he paid a personal investment of $ 375 million and is currently president. He supported the Retro BioSciences Biotechnology Company with an investment of $ 180 million, and also participated in financing cycles for the Brain-Computer interface manufacturer of Musk Neuelink.

Apart from these companies focused on science and technology, Altman was also a first donor of the productivity management platform Asana and Reddit, being a member of the board of directors of the latter until 2022. His participation in Reddit was estimated at $ 600 million after the IPO of the platform.

The CEO of Openai also made a lucky early infusion of $ 100,000 in Airbnb in 2008 when the company was in its childhood in the short term. In addition, there was its first $ 100,000 investments in Uber, which is now worth $ 194 billion.

Altman also financially supported the monetization platform for Patreon designers, even putting his money to other IA-oriented companies, including 35 billion Titan Humane dollars.

After almost a decade of Steering Y Combinator from 2011 to 2019, Altman obtained an overview of what is funded, what crashes and what can really evolve. The diversified portfolio of the Millennium billionaire of the billionaire covers processing technology, nuclear energy, fintech and social platforms. All the assets he controlled until the beginning of 2024, it was estimated at at least $ 2.8 billion, according to reports from the Wall Street Journal. The CEO of Openai said that its venture capital funds had invested in more than 400 companies, from last year.

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