Altman: Met co-founder Brockman while recruiting him to Stripe
Sam Altman · Sam Altman: "Never a Better Time to Do a Startup" · Y Combinator · Jul 28, 2026 · at 18:43
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman recounts how helping Stripe recruit its first employee led to meeting his eventual OpenAI co-founder Greg Brockman.
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“I met Greg Brockman my co-founder, OpenAI, because I was a very early investor in Stripe when I was, like, I don't know, 22 or something, and they were, like, this was before they had, you know, like, real investors that could really help them, and they said, you know, we're trying to close our first hire. Will you, like, drive down to Palo Alto tonight and have dinner with this guy to convince him he should, like, drop out of school and join Stripe, which is Greg Brockman. And then, like, eight years later, we started a company together.”
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