Before Sam Altman became the face of AI, the tech whiz went on an $85 million, 18-month real estate shopping spree — including splurging $43 million on a Hawaii estate located next to the home of the island’s first king, according to a report.
The OpenAI boss — whose ouster on Nov. 17 stunned Silicon Valley before he was reinstated five days later — made the previously unreported purchase on the Big Island of Hawaii in 2021, Business Insider reported.
Altman also bought residences in San Francisco and Napa, Calif., when he began the spree in early 2020 while pushing his eyeball-scanning crypto startup Worldcoin and releasing OpenAI products in private beta, according to business and real estate findings reviewed by the outlet.
His 12-bedroom Kailua-Kona mansion was scooped up in July 2021 — a year before ChatGPT launched — and is located next to the reconstructed royal temple of King Kamehameha I.
The temple, built in the late 1700s, is on land considered a “national historic site” by the National Park Service, and served as the home of King Kamehameha I — the first ruler of the Kingdom of Hawaii — until his death in 1819.
Altman — who has built a fortune estimated to be as high as $700 million — bought the estate through an LLC managed by Jennifer Serralta, per Insider. She describes herself on LinkedIn as a “chief operating officer for a family office.”
It wasn’t immediately clear if that LLC was the Altman Family LLC, or the Sam Altman Qualified Opportunity Fund, which Insider reported was registered to a property next door to Altman’s Hawaii home.
Presumably, that family office is Altman’s, as her name appears as a manager on paperwork for other businesses owned by the OpenAI chief, according to Insider.
Serralta did not immediately respond to The Post’s request for comment via LinkedIn.
Representatives for Altman at OpenAI did not immediately respond to The Post’s request for comment.
Another of Altman’s real-estate purchases includes a $27 million weekday residence in San Francisco’s upscale Russian Hill neighborhood.
He scooped up the compound — which boasts a wellness center, infinity pool, and underground garage — through an LLC in March 2020.
He also used an LLC to buy a $15.7 million ranch in Napa Valley in late 2020, according to documents reviewed by Insider.
There are reportedly five separate homes on the 950-acre estate, including vineyards with impressive views of northern California.
Several of Altman’s companies have been linked to the property, including Project 2024 LLC and yet another venture firm, Hydrazine Capital Management.
Altman’s family office, like many other Silicon Valley tech moguls’, likely managed the transactions, though it’s particularly private, with many details about its operations and staff members kept under tight lock and key.
He also has a fourth property in Big Sur, Calif., though there’s little known about the home besides the fact that this is where Altman, a self-admitted doomsday prepper, keeps a stash of guns, gold, gas masks from the Israeli Defense Forces and other survival goods should AI ever reach a point where it poses a “risk of extinction” to humanity.
Altman’s owned the property since at least 2016 when he spoke about the “big patch of land” in Bug Sur to the New Yorker, which he said he “can fly to” in the case of an emergency. Should that doomsday come, he can even fly there himself, as 2010 documents reviewed by Insider show that Altman is licensed to fly single-engine planes.
In that same 2016 New Yorker interview — at which point Altman worked for startup seed funding company Y Combinator — Altman’s mother, a dermatologist named Connie Gibstine, told the magazine that “Sam does keep an awful lot tied up inside.”
This is perhaps how he’s been able to keep his Hawaii home so private.
With 12 bedrooms, several homes on the land, and a private inlet, it’s an impressive feat. Perhaps the only time Altman suggested he has an abode in Hawaii was in a tweet last April, where he showed a photo of himself wake-surfing off the coast of Kailua-Kona.
According to Insider, the view of Hawaii’s Big Island in the background of Altman’s photo precisely matches the view from his Kailua-Kona home’s listing.
Aside from citing real estate filings managed by Serralta — who presumably works for Altman’s family office — Insider pointed to a post on her personal blog as a reason to think Altman was connected to the property.
In a March post on Serralta’s blog, called Raising Travelers, she wrote that she stayed at a Kailua-Kona property owned by “a friend” while vacationing in Hawaii, according to Insider. However, at the time of The Post’s story, Raising Travelers appears to have been stripped from the internet.
Altman has one family connection to Hawaii: His younger sister, Annie Altman, has lived there on and off since 2017, though it doesn’t appear that Altman moved to Hawaii to be closer to his youngest sibling. The two haven’t spoken since 2021, according to Insider.
Their feud began after Altman offered to buy her a home — an offer she denied after learning that a lawyer would control the property, she told Insider.
Annie has since reportedly been living with financial instability after spending a lot of time battling an illness and has been working as an artist and entertainer, including in-person and virtual sex work, in order to support herself, per Insider.
In fact, Annie told the outlet that she didn’t know Altman also lived in Hawaii until Insider reached out to her for comment.
Altman has lived his life very differently, and though IRS filings show that he brings in a salary of just $58,333 as the CEO of OpenAI, he’s believed to have made a hefty fortune thanks to his equity ownership in a host of companies he has led, founded or backed over the years.
Because much of his fortune is tied to private companies, Altman’s precise net worth is unknown.
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