[cthalupa]

> Sam Altman has been an objectively successful leader of OpenAI.

I'm not sure this is actually the case, even ignoring the non-profit charter and the for-profit being beholden to it.

We know that OpenAI has been the talk of the town, we know that there is quite a bit of revenue, and that Microsoft invested heavily. What we don't know is if the strategy being pursued ever had any chance of being profitable.

Decades-long runways with hope that there is a point where profitability will come and at a level where all the investment was worth it is a pretty common operating strategy for the type of company Altman has worked with and invested in, but it is less clear to me that this is viable for this sort of setup, or perhaps at all - money isn't nearly as cheap as it was a decade ago.

What makes a for-profit startup successful isn't necessarily what makes a for-profit LLC with an operating agreement that makes it beholden to the charter of a non-profit parent organization successful.