Sam Altman’s Net Worth Tops $4 Billion From Newly Revealed Investments During Musk-Altman Trial
Topline
OpenAI cofounder and CEO Sam Altman disclosed more than $2 billion worth of personal stakes in companies that conduct business with the ChatGPT maker, including owning a third of power company Helion Energy, adding nearly $1 billion to his previously estimated net worth.
Sam Altman, chief executive officer and co-founder of OpenAI Inc., right, and Greg Brockman, president and co-founder of OpenAI Inc., arrive at the federal court in Oakland, California, US, on Thursday, April 30, 2026. Photographer: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg
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Key Facts
During the court trial between Elon Musk and OpenAI, Musk’s lawyer Steven Molo questioned Altman on a list of nine companies—including Cerebras, Helion, Reddit and Stripe—which Altman has personal stakes in and which also do business with OpenAI.
Altman disclosed that he has more than $2 billion in personal stakes in companies that do business with OpenAI, with his stake in Helion, which he first invested in around 2015, worth $1.65 billion.
He testified that he first asked the OpenAI board to look into a deal with Helion in late 2022 and signed an agreement with Helion that was a roadmap for potential future agreements between the two companies.
Molo also pressed Altman on his stakes in AI chipmaker Cerebras, including discussions of a potential merger with the company in 2017 during which Musk’s lawyers said Musk had no idea of Altman’s investment in the company (In April, The Information reported OpenAI had plans to spend $20 billion on Cerebras chips.).
Forbes Valuation
Forbes estimates Altman’s net worth is more than $4 billion, including his newly revealed stakes in certain companies as part of the lawsuit. The trial also revealed two new billionaires: OpenAI president Greg Brockman, who testified a near $30 billion personal stake in the ChatGPT maker, and OpenAI cofounder Ilya Sutskever, with a $7 billion stake. Altman testified that he holds an indirect stake in OpenAI through Y Combinator—an amount that was not publicly disclosed.
Sam Altman’s Political Ambitions
Through his questioning, Molo tried to paint Altman as not purely motivated by OpenAI’s nonprofit mission of developing safe AI and rather external incentives like money and power. Molo brought up an email OpenAI cofounder Ilya Sutskever sent Sam in 2017: “We don’t understand why the CEO title is so important to you … Is AGI truly your primary motivation? How does it connect your political goals?” Altman testified that he was thinking about running for California governor during the early days of OpenAI in 2017 in response to Molo’s question about previous reports that he had considered running for U.S. president.
Key Background
Altman took the stand Tuesday in the federal Musk-Altman trial in Oakland as both a codefendant and OpenAI’s chief witness in the case that could determine the company’s future ahead of a planned IPO later this year. Under questioning from OpenAI’s lead counsel Bill Savitt, Altman walked jurors through Musk’s failed bids for control, including a proposal to fold OpenAI into Tesla. Altman testified Musk wanted “total control” of any for-profit OpenAI entity with a vague promise to step back over time—a promise Altman said he didn’t buy. Molo worked to cast Altman as untrustworthy, citing past concerns from employees including Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei and former OpenAI board members, as well as pointing to a 20-page New Yorker article with a headline asking whether Altman could be trusted. Musk is seeking to force OpenAI back to nonprofit status, remove Altman and Brockman from the board and claw more than $130 billion back into the nonprofit arm—making Altman’s credibility on the stand arguably the central variable in the case.
