Greg Brockman’s leadership of OpenAI has made him very, very rich.
Brockman’s stake in the ChatGPT makers is worth nearly $30 billion, the OpenAI president testified in federal court Monday.
Those shares place him among the 100 wealthiest people, according to the Forbes billionaire ranking, which ranks people with that level of wealth in the 80s or 90s. Brockman on Monday also testified to a $471 million investment in payments company Stripe, where he used to work, and a stake in Corweave, a cloud computing provider that has a deal with OpenAI.
Brockman is not currently listed on the Forbes ranking. Disclosures about his wealth emerged during trial testimony over claims brought by Elon Musk, who holds the No. 1 spot on the Forbes list, with a $839 billion net worth.
Musk has accused Brockman and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman of trying to “steal a charity.” According to Musk, Altman and Brockman transformed OpenAI from a nonprofit into a for-profit enterprise to enrich themselves, taking advantage of Musk’s early donations to the venture.
OpenAI’s latest fundraising round valued the artificial intelligence company at $850 million.
While on the witness stand, Brockman also revealed a financial interest in Altman’s family office, which Musk’s attorneys used to suggest he was financially motivated to side with Altman over Musk.
According to a 2017 email from Musk’s associate Jared Birchall, which was shown to jurors, Altman gave Brockman the stake in compensation for his work at OpenAI. It was worth $10 million at the time, Birchall wrote.
“Naturally, Greg is going to have greater allegiance toward Sam as a result of this arrangement,” Birchall wrote in the email disclosing the stake to Musk.
Brockman said it wasn’t odd that Musk wasn’t directly included in the conversation about his compensation.
“Elon’s time was relatively hard to get, so there were a lot of decisions we made that we never fully broadcasted to him,” he said.
Court filings from Musk’s lawyers have made much of diary entries where Brockman appears to write about circumventing the Tesla CEO to make money.
“Financially what will take me to $1B?” Brockman wrote in one 2017 diary entry.
In another entry, Brockman appeared to acknowledge that converting OpenAI’s corporate structure without Musk would be “morally bankrupt.”
Brockman on Monday testified that his writings were taken out of context.
“That was an expression of frustration, not a plan,” said Brockman when asked about his journal entry that said OpenAI should be “flipped” and generate profit.
Musk’s lawyer, Steven Molo, kept up the theme while examining Brockman on the witness stand in an Oakland, California, federal courtroom.
He asked Brockman why he didn’t donate $29 billlion to OpenAI’s nonprofit after getting to his goal of $1 billion.
He also asked Brockman about an email soliciting donations from then-Yahoo CEO Marissa Meyer. In the email, Brockman appeared to say he would personally donate $100,000 to OpenAI’s nonprofit organization.
Brockman, who testified that he spoke of his $100,000 committment to other potential donors, never actually made the donation, he said.
“Did you think it was morally bankrupt to say that you were personally donating 100,000, and then not do that?” Molo asked him.
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