Greg Brockman

Who they are

Greg Brockman is President and Co-Founder of OpenAI — dropped out of both Harvard and MIT before becoming Stripe's first CTO, then co-founded OpenAI in 2015 and famously resigned in solidarity when Sam Altman was ousted by the board.

Person

Greg Brockman started at the University of North Dakota, transferred to Harvard for Mathematics and Computer Science (2008–2009), then moved to MIT for Computer Science before dropping out in 2010 — a path that signals he was following opportunity, not credentials. From MIT he went directly to Stripe, where Patrick Collison — a classmate — brought him in as the company's founding engineer and first CTO, the role that defined his reputation as a builder who could hold the technical vision of a fast-scaling company. In January 2015, when OpenAI was a small nonprofit AI research lab, he co-founded it alongside Sam Altman, Ilya Sutskever, Trevor Blackwell, and others, and has served as President and Chairman since. He resigned in solidarity when Altman was removed by the board — one of the more dramatic public acts of professional loyalty in recent tech history — before returning with Altman. His public platform spans TED2023 ('The inside story of ChatGPT's astonishing potential'), SXSW 2023, the MIT AI Conference, the Milken Institute Global Conference, and a 2025 appearance on the Big Technology Podcast covering AI self-improvement, the superapp bet, and the path to AGI; he also appeared at PMWC Precision Medicine World Conference 2026. He writes at blog.gregbrockman.com and keeps a personal site at gregbrockman.com, covering his path to OpenAI, the CTO role, and AI development. The through-line is someone who repeatedly joins things at their earliest, most uncertain moment — Stripe as employee zero, OpenAI as a nonprofit moonshot — and builds the technical and organizational scaffolding from scratch.

Company

The most recent development is OpenAI's confidential S-1 filing with the SEC on June 8, 2026, targeting a potential IPO as early as fall 2026 — with Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley engaged and a target valuation near or above $1 trillion. That filing followed the close of a $122 billion funding round in March 2026 at an $852 billion post-money valuation, anchored by Amazon ($50 billion), SoftBank ($30 billion), and Nvidia ($30 billion), co-led with Andreessen Horowitz and D.E. Shaw Ventures. On the product side, OpenAI launched GPT-5.4 in early 2026 driving record engagement in agentic workflows, expanded Codex to over 2 million weekly users growing 70%+ month-over-month, launched ChatGPT Work in July 2026 to automate workflows across web and mobile, and entered AI-driven cybersecurity with the Daybreak initiative in May 2026. Revenue reached approximately $2 billion per month as of March 2026, with CFO Sarah Friar reporting the annualized run rate had surpassed $20 billion — though the company projected $14 billion in losses for 2026 and does not expect to reach break-even until around 2029–2030.

Market

The enterprise AI market is effectively an oligopoly: Google, OpenAI, and Anthropic together control nearly 90% of the $37 billion enterprise segment as of end-2025. OpenAI's enterprise share dropped from 50% at the end of 2023 to 25% by late 2025, with Anthropic holding 40% and Google 21% — a meaningful share shift in a short window. The competitive and regulatory environment is intensifying simultaneously: xAI, Meta's LLaMA open-source models, Baidu, Mistral, and Cohere all apply pricing pressure, Chinese open-source models like DeepSeek are compressing margins, and both U.S. and EU authorities are moving toward antitrust scrutiny and AI governance frameworks including the EU AI Act.

Network

Brockman's tightest professional relationships are with his OpenAI co-founders — Sam Altman (CEO), Ilya Sutskever, and Trevor Blackwell — forged from the company's founding in 2015 and stress-tested through the 2023 board crisis. Patrick Collison is a notable pre-OpenAI connection: the Stripe founder brought Brockman in as first CTO, making Collison effectively the person who put Brockman on the map before OpenAI existed.

Sam Altman· CEO, OpenAI
Ilya Sutskever· Co-founder, OpenAI
Trevor Blackwell· Co-founder, OpenAI
Patrick Collison· Co-founder and CEO, Stripe
Sarah Friar· CFO, OpenAI

How they likely show up

Co-founded OpenAI in January 2015 when it was a nonprofit with no product → comfort with zero-to-one environments where the mission precedes the business model.
Joined Stripe as founding engineer and first CTO before any product-market fit existed → pattern of choosing early-stage bets over safer, later-stage roles.
Long tenure at OpenAI (January 2015 to present, a decade at the same company through nonprofit, for-profit conversion, and near-collapse) → thinks in multi-year arcs; not a job-hopper chasing the next title.
Resigned in solidarity with Sam Altman during the November 2023 board crisis → high personal loyalty, willing to make high-stakes decisions fast under pressure.
Active on TED, SXSW, MIT AI Conference, Milken, and podcast circuits — not just one format → comfortable translating technical depth for multiple audiences, from researchers to investors to general public.
Content themes include compute-powered economy, solo founders and AI, and the American dream and AI access → public voice is optimistic and democratizing, not purely technical.

Conversation tips

→ Reference his blog.gregbrockman.com post on defining the CTO role at OpenAI — it's a specific, reflective piece and signals you've read primary sources, not just profiles.
→ The board crisis and solidarity resignation is the defining personal-professional moment of his career — if it comes up naturally, ask about decision-making under that kind of time pressure rather than the politics.
→ He went to TED2023 to explain ChatGPT's potential to a general audience — he's clearly comfortable making the case for AI's upside; meet him there before probing risks or limitations.
→ He has angel-invested in over 20 startups — if you're a founder or know founders, that's a natural bridge; he's operating as both builder and backer.
→ His content themes around compute access and 'AI and the American dream' suggest he responds well to questions about broad access and distribution, not just capability.

Toolbox

Openers

Open on the board crisis resignation — he publicly resigned in solidarity with Altman in November 2023, one of the most dramatic loyalty calls in recent tech, and came back. That story has arc and he's reflected on it publicly via the Knowledge Project podcast episode 'Inside the 72 Hours That Almost Killed OpenAI.'
Reference his TED2023 talk 'The inside story of ChatGPT's astonishing potential' — it's on-the-record, specific, and shows you've seen how he frames the mission for non-technical audiences, which is different from how he writes on his blog.
Bring up the Stripe founding chapter — Patrick Collison brought him in as employee zero and first CTO; it's the pre-OpenAI chapter that explains everything about how he thinks about early-stage company building, and it rarely gets as much attention as OpenAI.

Discovery questions

You've now built two companies from zero — Stripe as first CTO and OpenAI as co-founder. What's different about building the technical organization the second time when the stakes and scrutiny are this much higher?
Your 2026 content themes include the compute-powered economy and AI access for solo founders — how does OpenAI's superapp bet actually change who can build serious companies, and what does that look like in practice?
OpenAI filed a confidential S-1 in June 2026 — the IPO path introduces a whole new set of stakeholders and disclosure obligations. How do you think about preserving the research-first culture through that transition?

Avoid

Don't treat the board crisis as a gotcha or political drama — he's been public about it on his own terms via the Knowledge Project podcast, and relitigating the board's motivations will close him down fast.

Make it yours