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All-In · 2 min · Oct 17, 2026
OpenAI should have reset governance when it went for-profit
Ben Horowitz
Chamath PalihapitiyaHost · Founder & CEO, Social Capital
Led Facebook's growth team; his firm backed Slack and AI chipmaker Groq.
Jason CalacanisHost · Founder & CEO, LAUNCH
Early Uber angel; sold Weblogs Inc. to AOL; hosts This Week in Startups.
About this segment
Ben says OpenAI should have made things right with early contributors and normalized management and governance when it shifted from nonprofit to for-profit. The lesson matters when mission-led structures become commercial companies.
From “CoreWeave Crash, AI Trade Cracks, Anthropic IPO Red Flags, Bill Gates Doomer”, Oct 17, 2026. Watch the full episode
Thanks. We'll look at and fix what's off.
“when they went from being a non-profit to a for-profit, they should have done a make right.”
Takeaways
- Ben says the conversion should have included a make-right.
- He recommends normalizing management and governance.
- He says to settle with people, not just the entity.
In this episode
Full episode- 5:58CoreWeave’s main risk is refinancing its fixed-price contracts7:10
- 31:11AI can lower software prices while expanding software demand6:32
- 53:40Anthropic should prioritize compute runway over IPO valuation6:13
- 40:19Payback period is the key data-center risk metric2:56
- 16:17LoudCloud’s bandwidth contracts show infrastructure risk2:14
- 1:14:54A small model cut Coinbase fraud by about 30%2:07
1:00:59OpenAI should have reset governance when it went for-profit2:04
Transcript
Transcribed by machine (Whisper) from the episode’s audio, so a word may be off here and there.
- 1:01:02
What's the story? Since you're a big OpenAI investor, you're not on the board, I don't think. Right? You're not on the board. What's the story with Sam Altman's equity grant? He still has no equity in OpenAI? And what's the advice there? You're going to give him a grant? You're going to vote for a grant as a shareholder? Hold on, what should he get? Yeah, I don't have, I don't want to like pretend I know things that I don't.
- 1:01:25
Okay, so you don't know that. So I don't know what the strategy is there. You can't be on the pod then. No, it's okay. It's all right. I'll repeat what I said years ago, that the company, when they went from being a non-profit to a for-profit, they should have done a make right. You go to Elon and you basically give him a share because he put it in the first 50 million or whatever. You give Sam a grant, you normalize things.
- 1:01:49
normalize the management and governance of the company and instead they did this weird hybrid ngo thing that created nothing but problems yeah but he got health care so he's good sam's got health care so nothing to worry about there you got to think he's good he has to get between two and four percent at this point that would yeah i think four percent is the right i think it's fair yeah it's i think it's fair relative to the comps on a total dollar tonnage basis it's incredible it's 20 to 40 billion dollars at a bit at a trillion and more from there it's kind of it seems like right ish you know yeah everybody approves so so voted here on the online podcast what should he have done uh in terms of screwing elon and the settlement there ben since we have you here what do you think he should have done because you're a big you're a
- 1:02:34
big investor in all of elon's companies what was your advice to sam of uh i said so i wasn't uh in that conversation then but i agree with david i mean i think that like it's always the right thing to just kind of if you're going to square it you got to square it with the people not just you know the entity totally all right so there you go two fastballs and now you hit both of them out of the park very well done ben you're fitting right in here you're