OpenAI

Co-founded Zip2 (1995) and PayPal (2002), with the latter sold to eBay. Holds bachelor's degrees in physics and economics from the University of Pennsylvania. Founded SpaceX in 2002 and became CEO of Tesla in 2008. Co-founded OpenAI in December 2015 and served on its board until February 2018, motivated by concerns that Google was not taking AI safety seriously. Left the board in 2018 after disagreements over the company's direction, including a failed effort to merge it with Tesla. Known for grounding startup decisions in safety concerns about advanced technologies—a stance that shaped OpenAI's founding mission before commercial pressures emerged.

Began his career at Stripe in 2010 upon leaving MIT, becoming CTO in 2013 while the company grew from 5 to 205 employees. Co-founded OpenAI in December 2015 alongside Sam Altman and Ilya Sutskever; the company initially operated from his living room. Led various projects at OpenAI, including OpenAI Gym and OpenAI Five. Unveiled GPT-4 in a live video demo in March 2023. Distinguishing trait: Pushes a "ship-then-iterate" culture inside OpenAI, arguing that wide usage surfaces issues and opportunities faster than closed-door research, contrasting with Altman's charismatic futurism through Brockman's methodical, technical, and understated approach.

Studied mathematics (BA 2005) and computer science (MS 2007, PhD 2013) at the University of Toronto under Geoffrey Hinton. Co-created AlexNet with Krizhevsky and Hinton (2012), a foundational deep convolutional neural network. After a postdoc with Andrew Ng at Stanford, joined Hinton's DNNResearch spinoff, acquired by Google in 2013 as Google Brain research scientist. Developed sequence-to-sequence algorithms and co-authored AlphaGo papers at Google Brain. Co-founded OpenAI in late 2015 as chief scientist, where he led research breakthroughs in large language models (ChatGPT) and reasoning models (o1). Departed in May 2024; co-founded Safe Superintelligence Inc. in June 2024. Defining trait: prioritized AI safety and became frustrated by pressure to accelerate product launches over safety work.

Dropped out of Stanford after two years and co-founded Loopt, a smartphone geosocial networking service acquired by Green Dot for $43.4 million. Joined Y Combinator in 2011 and served as its president from 2014 to 2019, where under his leadership the accelerator helped about 1,900 companies including Airbnb, Instacart, and DoorDash. Co-founded OpenAI in 2015 and became its CEO in 2019. Known for presenting himself as calm, analytical, and substantive, speaking clearly about AI opportunities while acknowledging risks that arise when technological development outpaces societal preparedness—a combination that makes him stand out in the technology sector.