"[E]xcellent and deeply reported." ―Tim Wu, New York Times Book Review "The first major biography of tech’s newest titan, this sets a high bar for those to follow." ― Publishers Weekly , starred review "An exemplary blend of biography, financial technology reportage, and futurology." ― Kirkus , starred review From an acclaimed Wall Street Journal reporter comes the first biography of the enigmatic leader of the AI revolution, charting his ascent within the tech world as well as his ambitions for this powerful new technology. On November 30, 2022, OpenAI released ChatGPT, a chatbot that captivated the world with its uncanny ability to hold humanlike conversations. Not even a year later, on November 17, 2023, Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, was summarily fired on a video call by the company’s board. The firing made headlines around the globe: OpenAI is the leader in the race to build AGI―artificial general intelligence, or AI that can think like a human being―and Altman is the most prominent figure in the field. Yet it was mere days before Altman was back running the company he had co-founded, with most of the directors who voted to fire him themselves removed from the board. The episode was a demonstration of how quickly the industry is moving, and of Altman’s power to bend reality to his will. In The Optimist , the Wall Street Journal reporter Keach Hagey presents the most detailed account yet of Altman’s rise, from his precocious childhood in St. Louis to his first, failed startup experience; his time as legendary entrepreneur Paul Graham’s protégé and successor as head of Y Combinator, the start-up accelerator where Altman became the premier power broker in Silicon Valley; the founding of OpenAI and his recruitment of a small yet superior team; and his struggle to keep his company at the cutting edge while fending off determined rivals, including Elon Musk, a former friend and now Altman’s bitter opponent. Hagey conducted more than 250 interviews, with Altman’s family, friends, teachers, mentors, co-founders, colleagues, investors, and portfolio companies, in addition to spending hours with Altman himself. The person who emerges in her portrait is a brilliant dealmaker with a love of risk, who believes in technological progress with an almost religious conviction―yet who sometimes moves too fast for the people around him. With both the promise and peril of AI increasing by the day, Hagey delivers a nuanced, balanced, revelatory account of the individual who is leading us into what he himself has called “the intelligence age.” Altman is a figure out of Isaac Asimov or Neal Stephenson. Or he is the author himself: if it feels as though we have all collectively stepped into a science fiction short story, it is Altman who is writing it. "The author supplies a meticulous account of 21st century networking culture in Silicon Valley, where Altman’s technical talents end up being less important than some of the qualities usually associated with religious leaders… The Optimist lets the reader see how thoroughly Altman outfoxed his patron, leveraging Musk’s paranoia into enormous sums of money while slowly making OpenAI his own…excellent and deeply reported." ― Tim Wu, New York Times Book Review "[Q]uite compelling." ― Benjamin Wallace-Wells, The New Yorker "[An] excellent new book…[Altman’s] personality is vivid and complicated enough that her story never flags. It is no hagiography." ― The Economist " The Optimist serves to remind us that however unprecedented the consequences of AI models might be, the story of their development is a profoundly human one." ― James Ball, The Guardian "Timely and myth-busting…" ― Richard Waters, Financial Times "The start-up that developed ChatGPT is emerging as one of the most consequential companies of our time. Hagey’s account contains more direct input from Sam Altman himself and his entourage, but also raises concerns about his trustworthiness." ― John Thornhill, Financial Times "The best account I've yet read of the period leading up and after Altman's firing, and offers the detailed explanation that all of us were craving for months after Altman got his job back…the collective force of Hagey's reporting is to answer once and for all what what it meant when the board said Altman had not been 'consistently candid.'" ― Casey Newton, Platformer "A brisk, compelling account of Sam Altman’s rise…If you want to understand the forces behind Altman and OpenAI, this is the book to read." ― Shakeel Hashim, Transformer "The first major biography of tech’s newest titan, this sets a high bar for those to follow." ― Publishers Weekly, starred review "An exemplary blend of biography, financial technology reportage, and futurology." ― Kirkus, starred review " The Optimist is a wonder of fair-minded investigation and page-turning storytelling. It reveals Sam Altman―our self-styled messiah of the age of artificial intelligence―in a