The first biography of the enigmatic leader of the AI revolution, charting his ascent within the tech world as well as his ambitions for this powerful new technology

On November 30, 2022, OpenAI released ChatGPT, a chatbot that captivated the world with its uncanny ability to hold humanlike conversations. Not even a year later, on November 17, 2023, Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, was summarily fired on a video call by the company's board. The firing made headlines around the globe: OpenAI is the leader in the race to build AGI-artificial general intelligence, or AI that can think like a human being-and Altman is the most prominent figure in the field. Yet it was mere days before Altman was back running the company he had co-founded, with most of the directors who voted to fire him themselves removed from the board.

The episode was a demonstration of how quickly the industry is moving, and of Altman's power to bend reality to his will. In The Optimist, the Wall Street Journal reporter Keach Hagey presents the most detailed account yet of Altman's rise, from his precocious childhood in St. Louis to his first, failed startup experience; his time as legendary entrepreneur Paul Graham's protégé and successor as head of Y Combinator, the start-up accelerator where Altman became the premier power broker in Silicon Valley; the founding of OpenAI and his recruitment of a small yet superior team; and his struggle to keep his company at the cutting edge while fending off determined rivals, including Elon Musk, a former friend and now Altman's bitter opponent.

Hagey conducted more than 250 interviews, with Altman's family, friends, teachers, mentors, co-founders, colleagues, investors, and portfolio companies, in addition to spending hours with Altman himself. The person who emerges in her portrait is a brilliant dealmaker with a love of risk, who believes in technological progress with an almost religious conviction-yet who sometimes moves too fast for the people around him. With both the promise and peril of AI increasing by the day, Hagey delivers a nuanced, balanced, revelatory account of the individual who is leading us into what he himself has called "the intelligence age."

Altman is a figure out of Isaac Asimov or Neal Stephenson. Or he is the author himself: if it feels as though we have all collectively stepped into a science fiction short story, it is Altman who is writing it.

Details

ISBN13: 9781324075967
Format: Hardback
Number of Pages: 384
Edition:
Publication Date:
Publisher: WW Norton & Co
Publication City, Country: New York, United States
Dimensions (cm): 26.3(H)x21.1(L)x3.2(W)589
Weight (gm): 589

Author Biography

Keach Hagey is a reporter at the Wall Street Journal. The author of The King of Content: Sumner Redstone’s Battle for Viacom, CBS, and Everlasting Control of His Media Empire, she lives in Irvington, NY.

Reviews

"“A deeply researched, gripping account of OpenAI.” — The Economist, ‘The best books of the year so far’" -- The Economist
"Named one of the "Best summer books of 2025: Environment, Science and Technology" by the Financial Times" -- Financial Times
"The Optimist serves to remind us that however unprecedented the consequences of AI models might be, the story of their development is a profoundly human one." -- James Ball - The Guardian
"Compelling..." -- Ben Wallace-Wells - The New Yorker
"Hagey’s book, written with Altman’s cooperation [is] critical, but no hagiography. “The Optimist” lets the reader see how thoroughly Altman outfoxed his patron, leveraging Musk’s paranoia into enormous sums of money while slowly making OpenAI his own ... [An] excellent and deeply reported book." -- Tim Wu - The New York Times Book Review
"[An] excellent new book… [Altman’s] personality is vivid and complicated enough that her story never flags. It is no hagiography." -- The Economist
"A brisk, compelling account of Sam Altman’s rise… If you want to understand the forces behind Altman and OpenAI, this is the book to read." -- Shakeel Hashim - Transformer
"Timely and myth-busting" -- Richard Waters - Financial Times