OpenAI Chief Executive Officer Sam Altman received a modest $76,001 in compensation last year, up slightly from $73,546 in 2022, a newly released tax filing shows.
Altman, who is worth at least $2 billion, has previously said he gets paid “whatever the minimum for health insurance is.” He has also repeatedly said he does not own equity in OpenAI. However, the San Francisco-based artificial intelligence startup has discussed giving him a stake as part of a possible shift to becoming a for-profit business, Bloomberg reported.
Altman’s paycheck was included in a filing that US-based nonprofits are required to submit annually to the Internal Revenue Service. The 2023 disclosure covers a tumultuous period for OpenAI and the nonprofit that oversees it. The year started with the skyrocketing popularity of OpenAI’s chatbot ChatGPT and ended with Altman’s brief ouster after clashing with the board.
OpenAI’s co-founder and former chief scientist Ilya Sutskever, who played a key role in firing Altman and left the company in May, received $322,201 in 2023, making him one of the highest paid officers listed on the form. Emmett Shear, the co-founder of Twitch who served as interim CEO during Altman’s ouster, was paid $3,720, according to the filing. Though Shear’s tenure appeared to last for about three days, the filing said he was paid from Nov. 19 to Nov. 29, which would be $338.18 per day, including weekends.
The total compensation could be much higher for some executives, however. The tax filing does not include any equity-based compensation that OpenAI’s named officers may have received as the company’s valuation has soared. It also doesn’t disclose any outside investment from venture capitalists into OpenAI’s for-profit entities.
There is only limited visibility into OpenAI’s financials given the lag in reporting and the number of companies that are related to its business. The nonprofit lists several partnership companies and related entities, including Aestas LLC, which oversees employee and investor equity.
According to the filing, OpenAI’s nonprofit received $5 million in public contributions in 2023, but the source of the funding wasn’t disclosed. The nonprofit ended 2023 with net assets of more than $21 million — a tiny sum compared to the $6.6 billion the company raised in October to support its efforts to keep building powerful AI products.
Last year, OpenAI expanded its charitable giving beyond universal basic income projects linked to Altman, according to the filing. It funded an ethics and journalism grant at New York University as well as research into AI economic opportunity through Atlanta-based nonprofit Operation Hope.
OpenAI also provided financial support for experiments “in setting up a democratic process for deciding what rules AI systems should follow,” the company said. The grants went to US institutions such as Harvard College, the University of Washington and the University of Michigan, along with a recipient in East Asia.
“As part of our charter, we’re committed to collaborating globally with research and policy institutions to address AGI’s challenges, and increased grants support this mission,” an OpenAI spokesperson said in a statement.
