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OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has been hit with a string of bad publicity in recent weeks that has tarnished his once clean-cut image.
In the midst of all this drama, legendary tech investor Paul Graham put an end to an old rumor and defended Altman.
Altman was not fired from his position as president of the well-known startup accelerator Y Combinator, Graham said in a post on X on Thursday. Graham co-founded the accelerator in 2005, and Altman served as president from 2014 to 2019.
Altman ran OpenAI and Y Combinator simultaneously until OpenAI announced the formation of a new for-profit entity and selected Altman as its president in 2019, according to Graham. Graham said he and his wife, Y Combinator co-founder Jessica Livingston, told Altman that if he wanted to work at OpenAI, they would find someone else to run Y Combinator.
“If he had said he was going to find someone else to be the CEO of OpenAI so he could focus 100% on YC, we would have been OK with that,” Graham wrote. “We didn’t want him to quit and have to choose a side.”