The Success Genome
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Company · Artificial Intelligence · founded 2015

OpenAI

AI research company that makes ChatGPT. Several of its early staff later left to start Anthropic.

Of the 11 people here linked to OpenAI, 3 are founders and 2 are still there. 7 of them also appear at Anthropic. These are people who succeeded, not the odds of succeeding.

Description and founding year: en.wikipedia.org. Each person's role links to its own source on their profile.

11 people at OpenAI

Founder

Role

Co-founder, CTO, then president, 2015–now

Also at

Source · high confidence. Wikipedia gives no dates for the CTO title. He left the board in November 2023 and took a sabbatical from August to November 2024.
Still there
Artificial Intelligence · Technology · Software 2 / 0
Greg Brockman
Co-founder and president, OpenAI; early engineer and first CTO, Stripe
professional · well-connected · some college
Founder

Role

Co-founder; CEO since 2019, 2015–now

Also at

Source · high confidence. The board removed him in November 2023 and he returned days later.
Still there
Artificial Intelligence · Venture Capital 2 / 2
Sam Altman
CEO, OpenAI; former president, Y Combinator
affluent professional · elite · some college
Founder

Role

Co-founder and board member, 2015–2018

Also at

Source · high confidence. Co-founded in December 2015; left the board in 2018.
Past
Technology 2 / 2
Elon Musk
CEO, Tesla and SpaceX; owner, X (formerly Twitter)
wealthy · some · college degree
Executive

Role

VP of Safety and Policy, 2018–2020

Also at

Source · medium confidence. Wikipedia says she left OpenAI in 2020 to co-found Anthropic, which was founded in 2021. Forbes' "about three years" counts from a 2018 start into the 2021 founding, so 2020 is the year a source states directly.
Past
Artificial Intelligence · Technology · Software 3 / 2
Daniela Amodei
Co-founder and president, Anthropic; former VP of Safety and Policy, OpenAI
middle · well-connected · college degree
Executive

Role

VP of Research, 2016

Also at

Source · high confidence. Departure year not stated; he left before founding Anthropic in 2021.
Past
Artificial Intelligence · Technology · Software 3 / 0
Dario Amodei
Co-founder and CEO, Anthropic; former VP of Research, OpenAI
middle · well-connected · graduate degree
Executive

Role

Policy Director, 2016

Also at

Source · medium confidence. His own site gives the Policy Director title with no dates. The 2016 start comes from Forbes, which says he joined after Bloomberg. End year not established.
Past
Artificial Intelligence · Technology · Media 5 / 2
Jack Clark
Co-founder and head of policy, Anthropic; former policy director at OpenAI; writes the Import AI newsletter
class not established · well-connected · college degree
Board

Role

Board member and early backer

Also at

Source · high confidence. Resigned from the board March 3, 2023; the page gives no joining year.
Past
Technology · Software · Venture Capital 2 / 0
Reid Hoffman
Co-founder of LinkedIn; early PayPal executive; Greylock Partners venture capitalist
professional-class · elite · graduate degree
Investor

Role

Investor, by his own account

Also at

Source · medium confidence. Named in the Fortune interview among his investments. No year, amount or current holding is stated, so status is held at past.
Past
Music 8 / 8
will.i.am
Founder, Black Eyed Peas; co-founder, Beats Electronics
public housing · outsider · no college
Employee

Role

Researcher; contributor to GPT-3 and Codex, 2019

Also at

Source · medium confidence. Wikipedia says he joined in 2019; the Hertz Foundation page says he helped build GPT-3 and Codex there. End year not stated, but he co-founded Anthropic in 2021.
Past
Artificial Intelligence · Technology · Software 3 / 1
Jared Kaplan
Co-founder and chief science officer, Anthropic; theoretical physicist and author of the neural scaling-laws paper
class not established · well-connected · graduate degree
Employee

Role

Researcher (scaling-laws and GPT-3 papers)

Also at

Source · medium confidence. The arXiv page shows his authorship but no affiliation. That he worked at OpenAI rests on Wikipedia's Anthropic article saying the founders were former OpenAI employees. Start and end years are not given because wiki-style profiles disagree.
Past
Artificial Intelligence · Technology · Software 3 / 1
Sam McCandlish
Co-founder of Anthropic, its chief architect since October 2025 and earlier its chief technology officer; second author of the neural scaling-laws paper
class not established · well-connected · graduate degree
Employee

Role

Member of Technical Staff; research engineering lead for GPT-3, 2016

Also at

Source · medium confidence. Joined 2016, left for DeepMind, returned 2018. End year not established beyond Anthropic's 2021 founding.
Past
Artificial Intelligence · Technology · Software 4 / 1
Tom Brown
Co-founder and chief compute officer, Anthropic; lead author of the GPT-3 paper at OpenAI
class not established · some · graduate degree

Connected companies

Other companies that share profiled people with OpenAI.

Anthropic
7 shared: Daniela Amodei, Dario Amodei, Jack Clark, Jared Kaplan, Sam McCandlish, Tom Brown, will.i.am
Stripe
3 shared: Greg Brockman, Sam Altman, Daniela Amodei
Airbnb
2 shared: Reid Hoffman, Sam Altman
Google
2 shared: Dario Amodei, Tom Brown
PayPal
2 shared: Elon Musk, Reid Hoffman
Tesla
2 shared: Elon Musk, will.i.am
Twitter / X
2 shared: Elon Musk, will.i.am
Apple
1 shared: Reid Hoffman
Baidu
1 shared: Dario Amodei
Beats Electronics
1 shared: will.i.am
Dropbox
1 shared: will.i.am
Helion Energy
1 shared: Sam Altman
Intel
1 shared: will.i.am
Meta Platforms
1 shared: Reid Hoffman
Microsoft
1 shared: Reid Hoffman
Reddit
1 shared: Sam Altman
SpaceX
1 shared: Elon Musk
Y Combinator
1 shared: Sam Altman