The Optimist
Sam Altman, OpenAI, and the Race to Invent the Future
Published on 20. May 2025
Book
Hardback
384 pages
978-1-324-07596-7 (ISBN)
Description
On 17 November 2023, Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, was fired on a video call. The firing quickly made headlines around the world. A week later, Altman was back running the company he had co-founded-and most of the directors who voted to fire him were themselves removed from the board. It was a demonstration of the then 38-year-old Altman's power to bend reality to his will, and of how vicious and personal the rush to create this world-changing technology is. In The Optimist, acclaimed reporter Keach Hagey tells the Altman story so far: from his childhood in St. Louis to his first startup experience, his time leading Y Combinator, his recruitment of a superior team at OpenAI, the machinations that led to his temporary removal and his struggle to keep his company at the cutting-edge while fending off rivals including Elon Musk. Based on more than two hundred interviews, The Optimist is an essential portrait of an individual whose vision of the future is already shaping our lives.
Reviews / Votes
""A deeply researched, gripping account of OpenAI." - The Economist, 'The best books of the year so far'" -- The Economist "Named one of the "Best summer books of 2025: Environment, Science and Technology" by the Financial Times" -- Financial Times "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 "Compelling..." -- Ben Wallace-Wells - The New Yorker "Hagey's book, written with Altman's cooperation [is] critical, but no hagiography. "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 ... [An] excellent and deeply reported book." -- Tim Wu - The New York Times Book Review "[An] excellent new book... [Altman's] personality is vivid and complicated enough that her story never flags. It is no hagiography." -- The Economist "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 "Timely and myth-busting" -- Richard Waters - Financial TimesMore details
Language
English
Place of publication
New York
United States
Illustrations
20 illustrations
Dimensions
Height: 231 mm
Width: 153 mm
Thickness: 35 mm
Weight
596 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-324-07596-7 (9781324075967)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
E-Book
05/2025
W. W. Norton & Company
€29.99
Available for download
Person
Keach Hagey is a reporter at the Wall Street Journal. The author of The King of Content: Sumner Redstone's Battle for Viacom, CBS, and Everlasting Control of His Media Empire, she lives in Irvington, NY.