Sam Altman, one of the most powerful leaders in Silicon Valley, is jealous of Gen Z college dropouts.
Altman said in the past couple of years he has not had a “real chunk of free mental space” to think about what he’d build now. “But I know that there would be a lot of cool stuff to build,” he said.
As CEO of the company, Altman helped bring in more than $30 million in funding including from notable VC firms like Sequoia Capital. Loopt went through startup accelerator Y Combinator, and after the app was acquired, he became the president of YC. He later cofounded OpenAI in December 2015 with a slew of people, including the world’s richest man, Elon Musk.
Despite his rise to success with tech startups, Altman said he longs to brainstorm other businesses.
“The degree to which OpenAI is, like, taking over all of my mental space, and I don’t get to go think about how to build a new startup, is a little bit sad,” Altman said.
Altman joins a list of college dropouts that have become tech leaders in Silicon Valley, including Bill Gates, Larry Ellison, Steve Jobs, Jack Dorsey, and Mark Zuckerberg.
“People are probably coming around to that opinion a little more now than maybe, like, 10 years ago,” Zuckerberg said.
A version of this story published on Fortune.com on October 8, 2025.
