Greg Brockman
OPENAI'S ENGINE ROOM
THE DEAL
Brockman dropped out to join a four-person Stripe and became its CTO, then left for a bigger problem: co-founding OpenAI.
AT A GLANCE
- EDUCATION
- Harvard University · started at Harvard before transferringGreg Brockman
- EDUCATION
- Massachusetts Institute of Technology · left without graduatingGreg Brockman
THE ARCHIVE
History · cartoons · headlines
THE TIMELINE7 sourced events
KNOCKED OUT IN THE BOARD CRISIS. BACK AT THE KEYBOARD
Brockman dropped out to join a four-person Stripe and became its CTO, then left for a bigger problem: co-founding OpenAI. He rewired the nonprofit to raise billions, got knocked out in the 2023 board crisis, came back — and returned from leave to chase the lab's biggest technical problems.
2010
HE DROPS OUT AND JOINS A FOUR-PERSON PAYMENTS STARTUP
Brockman left school to join Stripe when the company was only four people, then helped scale its engineering organization and became chief technology officer.
SOURCES: Greg Brockmanfirst-partyGreg Brockmanfirst-party
2015
HE LEAVES STRIPE LOOKING FOR A PROBLEM WORTH HIS LIFE
After helping grow Stripe from a tiny startup into a much larger company, Brockman left in 2015 and began looking for a new problem. Conversations with Sam Altman about safe human-level AI helped turn that search into OpenAI.
SOURCES: Greg Brockmanfirst-party
Dec 11, 2015
HE HELPS LAUNCH OPENAI AS ITS CTO
OpenAI launched as a nonprofit research company with Brockman as CTO and one of the founding organizers behind the new lab.
SOURCES: OpenAIfirst-party
Mar 11, 2019
HE HELPS REWIRE OPENAI TO RAISE BILLIONS
Brockman and Ilya Sutskever announced OpenAI LP, a capped-profit structure designed to raise the enormous amounts of capital and compute they said frontier AI would require.
SOURCES: OpenAIfirst-party
May 5, 2022
OPENAI MAKES HIM PRESIDENT
OpenAI moved Brockman into a new president role combining company strategy with direct technical work on training the lab's flagship systems.
SOURCES: OpenAIfirst-party
Nov 17, 2023 – Nov 29, 2023
THE BOARD CRISIS KNOCKS HIM OUT — THEN HE COMES BACK
OpenAI removed Brockman from the board during Sam Altman's ouster; less than two weeks later the company announced Brockman was back as president alongside Altman's return as CEO.
Nov 12, 2024
HE RETURNS FROM LEAVE FOR THE BIG TECHNICAL PROBLEMS
After a roughly three-month leave, Brockman returned to OpenAI while he and Altman worked out a role focused on major technical challenges.
SOURCES: Reutersreported
