An OpenAI stake at the root of the fortune
Brockman's wealth comes mainly from his ownership in OpenAI, the artificial intelligence company he helped found in 2015. OpenAI began as a nonprofit research laboratory with the goal of developing advanced AI that benefits humanity. Brockman was one of its first leaders and did much of the work of recruiting its early team and building its engineering culture.
In 2019 OpenAI created a for profit arm with capped returns so that it could raise the very large sums needed to train models. Microsoft became its main investor and computing partner. OpenAI then released a series of large language models, and in late 2022 it launched ChatGPT, which quickly became one of the fastest growing consumer applications ever and set off a wave of investment in AI across the technology industry.
Successive funding rounds at rising valuations increased the value of the shares held by founders and employees, including Brockman. In 2025 OpenAI completed a restructuring that turned its for profit arm into a public benefit corporation, with the nonprofit retaining control. His fortune therefore depends on the private valuation of OpenAI, which is not a listed company, along with earlier gains from his years at Stripe.
OpenAI, Stripe and investments
Brockman's main known holdings are:
- OpenAI: his stake in the company where he serves as president, which accounts for most of his wealth
- Stripe: shares from his period as an early employee and chief technology officer of the online payments company
- Angel investments: stakes in a number of startups, particularly in technology and AI related fields
At OpenAI he has focused on engineering and on the systems used to train and run large models. He led work on the infrastructure that made models such as GPT-4 possible and has often been the person demonstrating new products in public presentations.
In November 2023 OpenAI's board removed chief executive Sam Altman and took away Brockman's role as chairman. Brockman resigned in protest. Within days, after pressure from employees and investors, Altman returned and Brockman came back as president, while the board was reorganized.
In 2024 he took an extended leave of several months before returning to the company later that year. He has since been closely involved in OpenAI's efforts to build large data centers and computing capacity.
From North Dakota to Silicon Valley
Greg Brockman grew up in Thompson, North Dakota, a small town near Grand Forks. As a teenager he took an interest in mathematics, chemistry and programming, and he competed in the International Chemistry Olympiad while in high school. He taught himself to code and built websites.
He enrolled at Harvard University and later transferred to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, but he left before finishing a degree to join a small startup in San Francisco. That company was Stripe, the online payments business founded by the brothers Patrick and John Collison. He joined in 2010 as one of its earliest engineers and later became chief technology officer, helping to grow the engineering team as Stripe expanded quickly.
In 2015 he left Stripe, saying he wanted to work on artificial intelligence. Later that year he co-founded OpenAI with Sam Altman, Elon Musk, Ilya Sutskever and other researchers and engineers. He served first as chief technology officer and later as president and chairman.
He married Anna Brockman in 2019 in a ceremony held at the OpenAI offices.
Public engagement on AI
Brockman has not built a large public philanthropic program under his own name, and he has said less in public about personal giving than some other technology founders. His public activity is mostly connected to OpenAI and to debates about artificial intelligence.
He often writes and posts about the progress of AI research, the engineering needed to build large models and OpenAI's mission. He has argued that advanced AI could bring large benefits to science, medicine and productivity, while acknowledging the need to manage its risks.
OpenAI's nonprofit parent, which controls the company, has committed to funding programs aimed at broad social benefit, and in 2025 it announced grants for community organizations. Brockman, as a long serving leader of OpenAI, has been part of the company's discussions on how its success should be shared.
In recent years he has also become more visible in policy discussions about how governments should regulate AI, supporting approaches that encourage development in the United States.