OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has been hit with bad press in recent weeks, which has cast a shadow over his once impeccable image.
Amid this swirling drama, legendary tech investor Paul Graham defended Altman by putting an old rumor to rest.
Altman was not fired from his position as president of the popular startup accelerator Y Combinator, Graham wrote in an article on X on Thursday. Graham co-founded the accelerator in 2005 and Altman served as its president from 2014 to 2019.
According to Graham, Altman simultaneously ran OpenAI and Y Combinator until OpenAI announced the creation of a new for-profit entity in 2019 and selected Altman as president. Graham said he and his wife, Jessica Livingston, co-founder of Y Combinator, told Atlman that if he wanted to work at OpenAI, they would find someone else to run Y Combinator.
“If he had said he was going to find someone else to be CEO of OpenAI so he could focus 100% on YC, we would have been OK with that too,” Graham wrote . “We didn’t want him to leave, just pick one or the other.
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