Paul Graham said he and his wife gave Altman a choice between OpenAI and Y Combinator.

Y Combinator

• OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has faced a lot of negative press recently, impacting his once-clean image.
• Not least among the controversies was the collapse of OpenAI's safety team.
• Tech investor Paul Graham has come to Altman's defense, putting to rest an old rumor.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has been hit with a bout of bad press in the past few weeks, which has cast a shadow over his once-squeaky-clean image. 

There was the fumble with OpenAI's new AI assistant, whose voice resembled Scarlett Johanssen in the movie "Her." There was also the abrupt breakdown of OpenAI's safety team, which raised doubts about the company's commitment to responsible AI development.

Amid these swirling dramas, legendary tech investor Paul Graham defended Altman by putting an old rumor to rest. 

Altman wasn't fired from his post as president of the famed startup accelerator, Y Combinator, Graham wrote in a post on X on Thursday. Graham cofounded the accelerator in 2005, and Altman served as its president from 2014 to 2019. 

I got tired of hearing that YC fired Sam, so here's what actually happened: pic.twitter.com/3YvBDH7oqV

— Paul Graham (@paulg) May 30, 2024

According to Graham, Altman was simultaneously running 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, Y Combinator's cofounder Jessica Livingston, told Atlman that if he wanted to work at OpenAI, they'd find another person to run Y Combinator.

"If he'd said that he was going to find someone else to be CEO of OpenAI so that he could focus 100% on YC, we'd have been fine with that too," Graham wrote. "We didn't want him to leave, just to choose one or the other.

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