Sam Altman has a long history with Y Combinator, going all the way back to the famed accelerator's first batch nearly two decades ago. He went on to lead the accelerator as its president and chief executive for several years, parting ways to pursue his work at OpenAI, where he is now CEO, full-time.
In securities filings reviewed by Bay Area Inno, Altman has claimed to be Y Combinator's chairman for at least the past three years. He was never the accelerator's chairman, though, and couldn't have been: A formal board didn't exist until after he left in 2019.
It's unclear why Altman is making that claim.
Now the CEO of OpenAI, Altman was reportedly asked to resign from YC in 2019, according to a recent WSJ report.
On his way out, Altman published a blog post on YC's website announcing that he would transition to the chairman role, a change that was reported by several news outlets on March 8, 2019, including Reuters, the WSJ, Axios, TechCrunch and the Silicon Valley Business Journal.
There was only one problem: It never happened.
Representatives for Altman didn't respond to multiple requests for comment.
A representative for YC told Bay Area Inno that Altman "left completely in 2019" and that "the chairman role never came to fruition."
Yet, Altman has been claiming the chairman title for at least three years in securities filings and a website associated with the AltC Acquisition Corp., a special purpose acquisition corporation, or SPAC, that he registered in 2021.
"Mr. Altman is an entrepreneurial and thought leader with a proven track record of growth investing within the technology industry. He is also the co-founder and CEO of OpenAI, a leading AI research and deployment company, and the chairman of Y Combinator," a filing from AltC reads.
Annual reports filed by AltC for the past three years all make the same claim. The most recent report even makes two contradictory claims: that Altman was currently chairman of YC at the time of filing and also "previously served" as YC's chairman.
Inflating or misrepresenting an executive's credentials could potentially be considered a material issue by the SEC, Marc Fagel said. Fagel is a lecturer at Stanford Law and was previously the regional director for the SEC's office in San Francisco.
"Misstating the qualifications of executives is something the SEC takes seriously," Fagel said. "Will they do anything about it? The SEC has lately been concerned about the SPAC space, but until (AltC and another company) actively merge, I don't know if they would take action."
Last year, AltC announced a proposed merger with Oklo, a startup based in Santa Clara designing nuclear fission reactors that are smaller and purportedly safer and cheaper to operate than traditional nuclear reactors.
YC invested in Oklo a decade ago, the same year Altman took charge of the accelerator.
Altman also personally backed Oklo, formerly known as UPower Technologies, through a seed round the following year. Though the amount Altman personally invested remains undisclosed, according to PitchBook. Altman recused himself from recent discussions between AltC and Oklo about the merger, according to regulatory filings.
A couple of months after revealing his planned departure from Y Combinator, Altman announced that Geoff Ralston had been named as his replacement. In that post, dated May 20, 2019, Altman only said he would remain as an adviser and "be around to help Geoff as he takes on his new role."
The change was framed as a decision by Altman to spend more time on his other project, OpenAI.
"Working on OpenAI has been more exciting (and more complex) than I ever imagined, and I’m excited to be able to focus on it more fully," Altman wrote at the time.
YC quietly removed the original announcement referring to any chairmanship.
Under Ralston's tenure, the accelerator formed an official board of directors for the first time. There has never been a board chair, though, a source with knowledge of the situation said.
When Ralston left at the end of 2022, incoming president and CEO Garry Tan took over his board seat and joined the other board members: Paul Graham, Jessica Livingston, Carolynn Levy and Brian Chesky. The makeup of the board was first reported by Forbes last month.
Altman did sit on a different, more informal, governing body at one point.
In 2014, Altman announced the formation of an internal body called the "board of overseers.
There were nine initial members of that group, including Altman and Chesky who served alongside Livingston, Adora Cheung, John Collison, Patrick Collison, Drew Houston, David Rusenko and Emmett Shear.
That body was charged with being responsible "for hiring and firing the YC President, and occasionally helping with strategic direction," Altman wrote in 2014. "Hopefully it doesn’t have to meet very often."
The board of overseers was not a traditional board of directors, though, and it was disbanded after the formal board was established. There are almost no subsequent references to it on Y Combinator's website since the original announcement of its formation, aside from the replacement of Cheung by Y Combinator alumnus Harj Taggar in 2016.
Taggar, who is now a managing director at Y Combinator, does not mention the board on his LinkedIn profile.
