• Altman’s OpenAI recently made a flurry of announcements, including blockbuster deals with AMD and Nvidia.
• Several tech CEOs Business Insider spoke with said they were impressed by Altman’s ambition.
• Others said they’d prefer if he took his foot off the gas in the interest of consumer safety.

Sam Altman’s breakneck pace has some tech leaders awed and others uneasy.

In the past few weeks alone, the OpenAI cofounder and CEO signed blockbuster computing deals with AMD and Nvidia, bringing his startup’s total dealmaking this year to about $1 trillion.

The company launched Sora, an AI video app that gained more than 1 million users in its first five days, as well as Instant Checkout, a shopping feature for its ChatGPT chatbot. OpenAI also unveiled new AI-powered workplace tools that its employees are using internally, signaling a potential move into the enterprise software market.

And that’s just a sampling of the San Francisco-based juggernaut’s latest announcements.

Altman “is one of the most ambitious founders out there,” said Aaron Levie, CEO of cloud-storage company Box, who likened today’s AI boom to the formative years of the internet and mobile computing. “He understands that these platform shifts come around once every decade or two decades. This is probably going to be the biggest one we’ve ever seen in tech.”

Levie and other tech leaders observing Altman from afar told Business Insider that success in entrepreneurship demands constant momentum. Yet even by startup standards, they said Altman’s torrent of activity stands out, with some calling it bold and others reckless.

“I can’t imagine moving the speed that they’re moving,” said Joel Milne, CEO of AutoUnify, a startup that makes AI-commerce applications for dealerships, marketplaces, and other vendors in the automotive industry. “It’s never been seen before.”

‘AI is a phenomenon’

Going full throttle makes sense for Altman as AI is advancing at an extraordinary clip, said Bipul Sinha, CEO and cofounder of cybersecurity firm Rubrik.

“You have to run fast to capture the opportunity,” he said. “AI is a phenomenon. It has a super exponential trajectory.”

Altman’s efforts appear to be paying off. San Francisco-based OpenAI expects to surpass $13 billion in revenue by year’s end, and its first mainstream product, three-year-old ChatGPT, has more than doubled its weekly active users in the last four months to about 800 million.

Still, OpenAI has significant expenses. The company is on track to spend $155 billion through 2029 due to the massive amount of power it needs to operate.

By timing several major OpenAI announcements close together over the past few weeks, Altman demonstrated strategic savvy, said Ross Finman, CEO of Augmodo, a startup maker of smart badges for retail workers that have 3D cameras and AI technology baked in.

“Each individually might not make a big splash, but collectively they do,” said Finman, who, like Altman, attended the Silicon Valley accelerator program Y Combinator. “It creates a network effect across multiple industries.”

Negotiation 101

Altman also deserves kudos for securing critical compute power for OpenAI for years to come with the AMD and Nvidia deals, said Art Zeile, CEO of DHI Group, the parent of job platforms Dice and ClearanceJobs.

“He is diversifying the data centers he is going to use for the future,” said Zeile. “Negotiation 101 is to have many suppliers so you can get the best price.”

Amid the frenzy, Altman played up his personal branding by inviting people to use Sora to create videos of him doing whatever they can imagine. Some followed through by making ones showing the tech founder shoplifting and rapping.

Joshua March, another Y Combinator attendee who leads the financial-services AI startup Veritus Agent, described the move as a clever way for Altman to make himself more likable.

“Most successful companies today have a strong CEO persona,” March said.

Hero or villain

Not all tech leaders are admirers of Altman. Some say they would prefer if he took his foot off the gas in the interest of consumer safety, as lawsuits allege that ChatGPT and other chatbots have harmed some users.

In August, a family sued OpenAI in California state court, alleging that ChatGPT “actively helped” their son explore suicide methods over several months before he died by suicide on April 11.

OpenAI is “moving fast and breaking things in an effort to chase a ton of revenue,” said Kate Doerksen, founder of the startup Sage Haven, a messaging app for kids that has AI components. “They’re not doing enough for safety.”

A spokesperson for OpenAI noted that the company last month rolled out parental controls to help keep teens safe and a parent resource page⁠.

“Our work to make ChatGPT more helpful and strengthen its safeguards is constant and ongoing,” she said. “We’ll keep improving safety as we build and scale the infrastructure needed for the future.”

Jill Popelka, CEO of AI cybersecurity company Darktrace, sees Altman as a leader who’s stuck in a unique bind. She said that slowing down could enable his rivals to catch up to OpenAI, but moving too quickly could result in mistakes or oversights.

“I can’t really imagine what it’s like to be in his shoes,” Popelka said, “to be the hero or the villain of this technology that everyone is talking about.”

• Joe Spector, from Soviet Uzbekistan, felt like he was living the American Dream working at JPMorgan in the ’00s.
• He said he found working in startups more fulfilling, and cofounded the telehealth company, Hims.
• Spector left Hims in 2021 to launch Dutch. He said these experiences taught him about risk-taking.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Joe Spector, 45, the founder and CEO of Dutch, a veterinary telehealth company. The following has been edited for length and clarity.

I decided to become an investment banker after watching the movie “Wall Street.” It was the early 2000s, before working in Big Tech was sexy, and I thought a job on Wall Street was the epitome of success for a college graduate.

After graduating from UC Berkeley in 2001, I landed my dream job at JPMorgan in New York City in 2002, but I found it to be massively unfulfilling.

That’s when I realized there was more to life than money — or at least more ways to make it than the rinse-and-repeat routine of investment banking.

Then I found startups. I gave up my comfortable salary to cofound Hims, and later launched Dutch, a telehealth platform that connects pet owners with licensed veterinarians. As someone from an immigrant background, I’m used to making something from nothing.

In the process, I learned how important it is to be really honest with yourself and open to feedback from others, to truly understand if a risk is worth taking.

I worked hard at college and graduated a year early

When my family arrived in California from the Soviet Union, now Uzbekistan, in 1990, I was 10 years old and in survival mode.

In the Soviet Union, no amount of smarts or effort would allow a Jewish person like me to rise to the top of a profession. America seemed like the land of opportunity.

I arrived in Fremont, California, with my family, with nothing but a red suitcase and some clothes. We moved into low-income housing and lived on food stamps for a long time.

My goal was to one day support my parents; theirs was getting me into a good school.

I started my undergrad at Berkeley in 1998 and busted my butt to do well. I didn’t allow myself to travel or explore college life. I graduated early, in three years instead of four, and was still in survival mode.

I asked myself: “What’s the best-paying job I can get after college?” The answer, then, was investment banking.

Going to business school made me realize I could be an entrepreneur

When I started at JPMorgan in 2002, I thought, “Oh my God, I’m living the American dream.”

I started with a base salary of $55,000, growing to six figures over the years. It wasn’t uncommon to get bonuses of 100% or more, and they made up a large portion of my total pay.

I enjoyed the critical thinking, but the work became repetitive, and the hours were crazy. It was like a boiler room. People used to get angry over misplaced spaces or grammatical errors in PowerPoint presentations. It was unnecessarily intense, in my opinion, and massively unfufilling. I knew I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life doing this.

Many of my colleagues were in the “work hard, play hard” mindset. We’d spend a ton of money on the weekends to try to feel better about the awful week we’d had.

In 2004, I decided to leave, but I stayed for another year to prove to myself that I wasn’t a quitter. My get-out-of-jail-free card was a place at the Wharton School for an MBA in Finance and Real Estate in 2005. I was 25.

Meeting people who were businesses — not just seeing them on TV —stripped away the mystique around entrepreneurship and was a turning point in my journey. They were real and making things up as they went along. It made me realize that I could do it too.

My parents wanted me to go back to my safe job at JPMorgan

My first startup out of Wharton was a dating website and it failed: it launched in 2006 and shuttered in 2008. But it taught me that you can only learn by doing. Most of all, I realized how much I loved startups — they were thrilling and showed me how fulfilling it could be to create products that improve people’s lives.

I didn’t cofound Hims until 2017, when I was 37. That was more than eight years of my parents asking, “Why don’t you go back to that safe job at JPMorgan?”

I have three kids, aged 8, 11, and 13, and there were times when I had to take a job just to get health insurance. In my heart of hearts, though, I knew that I loved early-stage entrepreneurship and wanted to create something out of nothing.

Hims was a classic Bay Area story. I was back in California and people I knew connected me to other founders. The idea for Hims came from a whiteboard brainstorm.

I helped found the company that connects consumers with licensed healthcare providers, and very early on, we could see traction. We raised a seed round, and the rest is history.

I’ll never forget getting our first billion-dollar unicorn valuation in 2019. From then on, I was making about $214,000 a year. In my wildest dreams, I never thought I’d ring the New York Stock Exchange bell, like I did in 2021 with the other co-founders and members of the executive team.

During COVID-19, like so many other American households, I got a pandemic puppy and faced veterinary bills in the thousands, like when we had to take our dog, Eddie, to urgent care after he ate some trail mix.

As a problem solver who runs to the fire, I decided to leave Hims behind in 2021 and start Dutch. It’s scary — and not great — to bring your salary down to zero, especially when you’re married with young kids. But I believed in myself and so did a bunch of other people.

We’ve raised tens of millions of dollars, and I’m earning six figures again. It’s amazing, and I’m very proud of our team.

Have honest conversations before taking big risks

I’ve learned this about taking risks: It’s really important to have honest conversations with yourself, the people you trust, and others.

Talk to your customers and potential customers. They have answers for you. That can help you understand if your idea is a gimmick or something that could make things cheaper or faster, or make people happier.

Don’t take a risk just because you’re unhappy and want to do something else. Be honest with yourself and open to honest feedback from others to really understand if the risk is worthwhile.

JPMorgan did not provide a comment when contacted by Business Insider.

• Luigi Mangione’s defense lawyers have challenged his federal murder case in a new legal filing.
• They are seeking to dismiss some of the criminal charges brought against the 27-year-old.
• Mangione is accused of killing UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in December 2024.

Lawyers for Luigi Mangione are seeking to dismiss some of the criminal charges brought against him in a federal indictment following the December 2024 killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, including the only count eligible for the death penalty.

In documents filed at a Manhattan federal court on Saturday, defense attorneys for Mangione sought to dismiss a count of murder through the use of a firearm.

“Count Three―the only death eligible count in the indictment―and Count Four must be dismissed for failure to state an offense because the stalking crimes charged in Counts One and Two are not ‘crimes of violence,’ as would be required to convict Mr. Mangione on Counts Three and Four,” Mangione’s lawyers said in the filing.

They added that prosecutors should also be prevented from using as evidence Mangione’s statements to law enforcement at the McDonald’s where he was arrested and his backpack, saying officers did not read Mangione his rights before questioning him and did not obtain a warrant before searching his bag.

Mangione’s attorneys have previously argued that he should not face the death penalty for Thompson’s killing and have asked US District Judge Margaret Garnett to bar the government from seeking the death penalty.

The judge has yet to make a decision on the death penalty front.

Even if the death penalty withstands all of the defense’s challenges, legal experts have told Business Insider that the likelihood of Mangione being sentenced to death is slim.

Last month, Mangione scored a legal victory in his state murder case when a judge dismissed the two top terrorism charges against him. New York Supreme Court Justice Gregory Carro ruled that the charges were legally insufficient.

Mangione faces three prosecutions in Thompson’s December 2024 shooting death in Midtown Manhattan, and has pleaded not guilty in each.

• Sleeping in an airport terminal can help save money or avoid an early alarm.
• I gave it a go, but the noise and eerie setting left me struggling to settle down.
• I’ve got one piece of advice to share: don’t do it.

Considering spending the night in an airport before an early flight?

Don’t.

I gave it a shot and ended up sleep-deprived and with a healthy dose of regret.

Friends who have done it before reassured me that London Gatwick Airport had plenty of space to settle down for the night. But the noise and the nerves throughout the small hours left me convinced that I’d rather splash out on an airport hotel or brave an early morning journey.

My flight — for a work trip to Dublin — was at 8:50 a.m., which would have meant getting out of bed around 5 a.m.

After finishing work on Monday, I went for a run to help tire me out before heading to Gatwick at around 11 p.m.

Gatwick, London’s second-busiest airport, is about an hour south of the city by train. Reading a novel in the train’s quiet carriage, I was already starting to drift off.

That all changed as I stepped off the warm train onto the breezy platform, then into the terminal with its clinical lights and squeaky white decor.

It all felt rather eerie as I wandered past some empty check-in desks, but I still felt confident that I could get some decent shuteye.

Up some escalators, I found the departures area where a couple of dozen fellow travelers were already set up for the night. Some were lying across rows of seats, others on the floor using heavy backpacks as pillows, and a lucky few in the cozy booths and armchairs of a 24-hour café.

On the one hand, I was reassured by the safety in numbers in case of any would-be thieves during the night. Yet being surrounded by strangers still made it challenging for me to let my guard down and relax.

I folded a hoodie for a makeshift pillow, zipped up my jacket with my valuables inside, and curled up on the bench with my rucksack.

The carry-on size restrictions of a budget airline limited what I could bring, and another hoodie or a neck pillow could’ve made me more comfortable.

A recent apartment move also meant I had waylaid the sleep masks I picked up on other travels. Resorting to cupping my hand over my face, I was envious of the man I saw with a beanie pulled down over his eyes.

I put in my headphones and tried to zone out, but struggled to feel sleepy. Around 1 a.m., I heard the sound of radios passing by and opened my eyes to see police officers doing the rounds.

The whirring escalators and sporadic low chatter were further reminders of the fact that I was in an airport terminal rather than tucked up in bed.

After another 30 minutes, utter doubt settled in. I wrote in my notes app: “How naïve I was to think ‘How bad could it be?'”

But I found more comfort after changing position to lie on my back. I also remembered the cap in my bag and pulled it over my face, Indiana Jones-style.

I finally started to nod off. Then I felt the seats shake.

It happened a few times before I opened my eyes to see a man sitting at the end of my row, charging his phone.

I’m reminded of the “Moby-Dick” scene where Ishmael ends up sharing a bed with the cannibal Queequeg. My companion seemed like a perfectly normal chap, but that was the unsettling sense of trying to sleep with strangers all around.

Moments later, around 2:30 a.m., a trio of men sat amid the napping travelers and started holding court, chatting and chortling.

One of my AirPods then ran out of battery. I decided to go for a walk.

Charging my phone at the Pret a Manger downstairs, I passed the time people-watching. Ground workers in hi-vis vests arriving for work queued for coffee. Two women greeted a bleary-eyed father pushing a stroller, having just arrived on a flight from Cyprus.

This got me thinking how much easier it might be to sleep in the airport with the comfort of friends or family by your side. Or if you’re on vacation, without the inherent stress of a work trip. I imagined being with my mates, somewhere hot, slightly hungover, waiting for a flight home.

I got some early morning hunger pangs and headed back upstairs to the departures area, hoping one of the café’s comfy armchairs might now be free.

Blissfully, there was space.

I ate a bacon roll before slouching down and making the most of the wide armchair. With my cap over my face once more and recharged AirPods back in, I finally drifted off.

Only a couple of hours passed before I woke up around 6:15 a.m., but I was still grateful for the smidge of sleep. My phone alarm went off 15 minutes later as crowds of passengers meandered toward security, and the airport hummed into life.

I tried to steal a bit more shut-eye, but somebody stumbled into my chair, jolting me awake. I finally headed airside and soon boarded my flight.

I’ve struggled to sleep on planes and trains, but the airport terminal was definitely the most challenging.

I don’t think any amount of preparation could’ve let me ignore the strange sensation of being around other people in the liminal space of an airport terminal at night.

Next time, I’d rather pay for a night in a hotel, or embrace the 5 a.m. alarm.