Sam Altman
Sam Altman is the CEO of OpenAI, the artificial-intelligence company behind ChatGPT. He joined as CEO in 2019, when OpenAI was still a nonprofit research lab without commercial products, and oversaw its transformation into a company with substantial toB and toC revenue — a shift that ZhenFund's Yusen Dai likened to Google's evolution from research project to product powerhouse . Altman came to the role with an unusual background: he had already spent years as a venture capitalist, first as a partner at Y Combinator, the startup accelerator, where he was known for his entrepreneurship courses before he became widely recognized for AI . He has described that trajectory — investor first, operator second — as "very strange" and in many ways disadvantageous, though it gave him foresight into what running a major company would demand .
Altman's influence on OpenAI extends beyond management. Multiple observers credit him with strong strategic judgment and an ability to shape public narrative, which has helped make OpenAI the market-moving force in AI rather than Google or Anthropic . He has also been personally involved in funding and supporting projects, including OpenAI's early capital needs, before Musk and others contributed larger sums . In early 2024 he married Oliver Mulherin, an Australian software engineer; the couple were expecting a child in March 2025 .
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Coverage
Agent Memory Reaches a Crossroads: Technical Approaches, Evaluation Methods, and AML's First Rankings
What happened in the Memory space this year?
Inside Anthropic: Building the Most Dangerous Technology, and Trying to Be Good
"I'm afraid of this technology being in the hands of the company, and I'm afraid of it being in the hands of the government."
FDE: Is the Call for Career Transformation in the AI Era Already Sounding?
From Super-Individual to Super-Role.
Drinking Beer with Lex Fridman in Beijing
He's come to China too.
Silicon Valley's Booming Longevity Economy, Its Commercial Path Is Right in Front of Us
"The first people who will live to 1,000 may already be alive today."
2026: A Letter to AI Founders — on Generosity, Cruelty, and Fog
Is AI entrepreneurship entering its "worst" era?
StepFun Closes New 5 Billion Yuan Funding Round: Racing for Endpoints, Crunching Numbers, and the Ultra-Marathon Ahead
StepFun has raised 5 billion yuan in fresh funding, setting a new single-round record for the sector over the past 12 months, as the battle for end-user devices heats up.
Whose Golden Age Is the AI Era? | Chatting with Zhang Zala: Liberal Arts Majors, Taking Action, the Patterns of Viral Hits, and How Ordinary People Can Win
It was yours, it was mine, it was everyone's golden age.
Where Did the Money Go? Who's Still Writing Checks? A 2025 VC Debrief With Jing Liu
VC takes a certain amount of instinct.
2025 AI Scene: What We Witnessed and Imagined This Year
There is no turning back — the only way forward is through.
60 Days After Alibaba Enters the Global AI Coding Battlefield | A Conversation with Shutong: Founder of Qoder
"Exactly right. Couldn't be more right."
Heart Capital: After Generating 500 Videos with Sora, Here's What We See | Voice VOICE
AI video generation has reached a new technological inflection point.
Is Moonshot AI's "OK" Actually OK? | Moonshot AI's Agent "OK Computer" Launches Today
"OK Computer," powered on!
Sam Altman: AI Will Become Infrastructure, Driving Societal Reconstruction | Vital Views
Counselor on Vitality
A 5,000-Word Postmortem: How an $1.1 Billion Acquisition Reveals OpenAI's Second Act
OpenAI's Three Turning Points
A Conversation with ChatGPT's Product Lead: What They See Amid the GPT-5 Controversy | Yunqi Tech π
Since GPT-5's launch, praise and criticism have flown in equal measure. Faced with unsparing market feedback, ChatGPT product lead Nick Turley recently sat down with Alex Heath, deputy editor at tech publication *The Verge*, for an interview that offered the first systematic reckoning with the backlash.
No Hype, No Hate: Kunlun Tech's New Model Is Kind of a Big Deal
The business world has never gone easy on "good technology."
How Good Is Metaso's Deep Research? | After In-Depth Testing, We Found 2 Standout Features
The competition is heating up — and that's a great thing!
How Good Is MiniMax's Agent? | We Tested 7 Cases and Have 3 Takeaways
The competition is heating up — and that's a great thing.
We built a pop-up space in Shanghai. Come daydream with AI.
At the crossing of technology and the humanities, let's turn dreams into reality.
Just now, OpenAI officially released o3 and o4-mini, defining a new paradigm for future reasoning, while the o1 series has been consigned to the dustbin of history.
o3 and o4-mini have redefined the future paradigm of reasoning.
GPT-4.1 Debuts Late at Night | On the Eve of the Closed-Source Fortress Crumbling? GPT-4o Finally Gets Its Successor
GPT-4.5 will be obsolete in three months.
20 Questions to Decode the Year of AI Video | A Conversation with Luma AI Product Manager Barkley
From Sora's Stunning Debut to a Year of Fierce Rivalry
20 Questions on the Year AI Video Went Mainstream | A Conversation with Luma AI Product Manager Barkley: From Sora's Stunning Debut to a Crowded Field
A Deep Dive into the Beauty of DeepSeek's Creation: How Was DeepSeek R1 Forged?
AI penetration today is only 5%. For the remaining 95%, what will their first AI application be?
2025 New Year Conversation with Koji: AI's Pivotal Year, the Dawn of the Agent Era | Seriously Speaking EP35
Stay optimistic about AI.
Bloomberg Interview with Altman: Looking Back on Two Years of ChatGPT, His Take on AGI | Bolt Picks
A recent interview with Sam Altman.
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella: From Leading Microsoft's Transformation to His Analysis of the Future of AI Agents | Bolt Picks
From "knowing everything" to "learning everything."
OpenAI's Unprecedented Product Blitz: A Complete Breakdown of Its 12-Day Launch Marathon
The most noteworthy thing isn't just o3.
Sora Is Finally Here. Is It as Powerful as You Imagined? | Yunqi Tech π
Late to the party — where's the surprise?
Sam Altman on OpenAI: The Hard but Right Path | Bolt Recommends
Opportunities and Breakthrough Strategies for Startups in the AI Wave
A History of Crypto's Rise and Fall: From Thin Air to $3 Trillion
Written as Bitcoin nears $90,000.
Introduction to AI Data Centers | Bolt's Reading Pick
The History, Construction Technology, and Corporate Landscape of AI Data Centers
What the Phenomenal Success of NotebookLM Means for AI Application Startups | A Bolt Perspective
A New Paradigm for AI Application Innovation
NotebookLM Product Lead Interview: How an AI Podcast Went Viral With a Team of Under 10 People, Born From Google's 20% Project | Z Talk
Being a "startup" inside Google.
Bolt Picks | The Opportunities and Challenges of Synthetic Data
Synthetic Data: The Future of AI?
The Reality and Fantasy of Hardware in the AI Era: A Conversation with NuMiao's Li Nan on Hardware, Marketing, Silicon Valley, and Life-Changing Experiences
Misjudgment, failure, bad luck, misfortune, the need to adapt, the possibility of being eliminated — these are the normal state of the world.
Limitless Founder: The Full 30,000-Character Interview — A 7-Minute Pitch, Thousands of Investor Inquiries, and the Fundraising Secrets of a Startup | Z Talk
Only three or four things truly determine whether a company succeeds or fails.
10,000-Word Interview with Perplexity AI CEO: Advertising Is the Greatest Business Model; $20/Month Subscriptions Are Not | Z Talk
The value isn't in the model — it's in the people who create it.
Large Language Models Are Still in Elementary School — Don't Rush Them Into the Workforce | A Conversation with ZhenFund's Yusen Dai: What Stage Is AI At Right Now?
This is a crossover episode between the ZhenFund podcast *"Seriously Speaking"[1]* and the Crossing podcast[2].
MiniMax Founder Junjie Yan: First Principles on the Path to AGI | Yunqi Capital
What really needs to be done is to make technology and product iterate fast enough.
What Is Love? I Asked My Daughter, My Mother, My Grandmother, and AI
On the morning of May 20, I received a bouquet of flowers from Moonshot AI. The card read: "I'm Kimi. Nice to meet you." I posted about it on Moments, and
After Reading 100,000 Words of Sora Discussions, Here Are 6 Takeaways I Want to Share
"I used to not believe it was real. Now I don't believe it's fake."
I Tried AI Fortune-Telling and It Had Zero Filter — Here's What It Actually Said...
Love is two people who like sticking together. Love is caring about each other. Love is even better than "ten thousand"!
Weekly Miscellany: I Launched a Podcast; What Is GPT-5; My 10 Reading Tips; Wishing Us Ordinary-Day Joy
In this fleeting age of electric fireworks, today is the rarest gift of all.
Code Brain | Starting With What GPT-5 Is
No one knows what will happen next. It's crucial to stay humble and watch the future unfold.
To Talk AI, We First Drank an AI Coke — Nine AI News Stories That Caught Our Eye Recently
Weekly Miscellany: Other People's 30s, How to Improve Your Luck, Good Things Will Happen
Never stop taking risks, never stop letting your imagination run wild — and always believe that something wonderful is going to happen. Who knows, you might just be the one to make it happen!
3 Articles and 1 Tool for AI Beginners
Everyone, to some degree, carries a version of the same question: Will AI make me stronger, like wings on a tiger? Or will it slowly consume me?
The 5 Most Thought-Provoking Articles I Read in 2023
A new year, and I've decided to reopen my WeChat Official Account and start writing again. First, to share what I've seen and what I've been thinking about. Second, to use writing as a way to push myself into more systematic reflection. Third, to meet new people through it.
Code Brain | Top 10 AI Predictions for 2024
Heaven's Feel: The Root of AI and Gaming | 5Y View
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
Happy first birthday to ChatGPT-3.5! What new lessons have AI and we learned over the past year? | Yunqi Tech Talk
AI's Spectacular Year
OpenAI Interim CEO: AI Harms Could Be Worse Than Nuclear War
Clearly, the turbulence is far from over.
A Question That Goes Beyond OpenAI: Who Should Be the Captain of a Tech Company?
Humans struggle to leap forward, yet we can advance in spirals.
AIGC Summit | Creating the AI Productivity Gateway: OpenAI's Ambitions
The Apple App Store for AI Is Here
Breakfast with the OpenAI Founder: 5 Principles for Building a Great Tech Company | Yunqi Capital Insights
Those who set rules for AI must first set rules for themselves.
Linear Capital Portfolio Company Tezign Founder Fan Ling's Lecture Notes: Creativity Has a Moore's Law Too
**"History is an arrow. It comes from the distant past and flies toward the future. AIGC is that arrow, just released — it may be a once-in-fifty-years technological breakthrough."** **— Fan Ling, Founder and CEO of Tezign**
Three Months, 300 Plugins: What Kind of Ecosystem Is ChatGPT Building? | Yunqi Tech Talks
Before finding the next explosive growth point, you first need to ensure information security, balanced performance, and system stability.
AIGC "Peak Series" | BAAI Conference: Humanity's Future and Hidden Concerns in the Post-AI Era
The Post-AI Era: Where Does Humanity Go From Here?
Code Brain | The Hidden AI Talent Arms Race Behind Deep Learning's Decade-Long Rise
A team of professionals with unwavering conviction will ultimately become hotly contested talent that companies fight over.
AIGC "Peak Series" | OpenAI CEO's Latest Interview: 30,000-Word Full Transcript on Technology, Competition, Fear, and the Future of Humans and AI
Humanity seems to be facing an exponential growth miracle it never imagined.
Source Code Capital | Bill Xiong of Earth-2: Entrepreneurs Must Have Light
Holding yourself to a higher standard in business really isn't a bad thing.
