Greg Brockman

Stripe's first engineer

Brockman's homepage says that at Harvard he administered and built systems for the Harvard Computer Society. He then became Stripe's founding engineer and CTO. By his own account he helped build the company from 4 to 250 employees.45

His homepage sums up his attitude in three words: "I love to build."5

Gym, Dota and GPT-4

At OpenAI he worked on projects including OpenAI Gym, OpenAI Five, the API and Codex, according to his homepage. Gym, a reinforcement-learning toolkit, came first; Brockman is one of seven authors of the 2016 paper.57

OpenAI Five trained for 10 months. On 13 April 2019 it beat Team OG, the Dota 2 world champions.9

In 2023 he was named as an author of the GPT-4 Technical Report. TED describes GPT-3 as the language model that powers ChatGPT.410

Explaining OpenAI to Congress

In July 2017 Brockman testified to the US Senate as OpenAI's co-founder and CTO. "Our mission is to build safe, advanced AI technology and ensure that its benefits are distributed to everyone," he said. He also argued that "First, we need to compete on applications, but cooperate on open, basic research."3

A year later he told a House panel that AGI meant systems "by which we mean highly autonomous systems that outperform humans at most economically valuable work". In May 2022 OpenAI announced he was becoming president, with a focus on training its flagship systems.18

Out of the boardroom and back

OpenAI's board removed Brockman and Sam Altman from the board on 17 November 2023. A review by the law firm WilmerHale, summarised by OpenAI in March 2024, found a breakdown in trust between the prior board and Altman. The special committee recommended endorsing the 21 November decision to rehire both men, after reviewing more than 30,000 documents and holding dozens of interviews. The board said it had unanimously concluded that Altman and Brockman were the right leaders for OpenAI.6

In August 2024 Brockman began a sabbatical. He was back in November, and The Decoder reported a new role with Altman focused on significant technical challenges.1112

A lawsuit and a $25 million donation

Elon Musk and xAI sued Brockman, Altman and OpenAI entities in federal court in Northern California. The second amended complaint of May 2025 pleaded breach of charitable trust; those are Musk's allegations, not findings. In May 2026 Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers adopted an advisory jury's finding that Musk's trial claims were barred by the statute of limitations. The order does not name individual defendants, and Musk's lawyers said they would appeal. OpenAI has called the suit sour grapes.14151618

Separately, Bloomberg reported, from FEC filings, that Brockman gave $25 million to MAGA Inc., Donald Trump's super PAC. AI Weekly, citing Wired, said it arrived on 12 September 2025 and was nearly a quarter of the $102 million the PAC raised in the second half of the year. OpenAI did not respond to questions about the donation.21317

Brockman, year by year

1. Jun 2016

   Co-authored the OpenAI Gym paper, a toolkit for reinforcement learning research.7

2. Jul 2017

   Testified to the US Senate as OpenAI's co-founder and CTO.3

3. Jun 2018

   Testified to the US House, defining AGI as highly autonomous systems that outperform humans at most economically valuable work.8

4. Apr 2019

   OpenAI Five beat the Dota 2 world champions, Team OG, after 10 months of training.9

5. May 2022

   OpenAI announced he was becoming its president.1

6. Mar 2023

   Listed as an author of the GPT-4 Technical Report.10

7. Apr 2023

   His TED talk was posted.4

8. Nov 2023

   Removed from OpenAI's board on 17 November. The board decided to rehire him on the 21st.6

9. Mar 2024

   OpenAI's board said he and Sam Altman were the right leaders for the company.6

10. Aug 2024

    Began a sabbatical from OpenAI.11

11. Nov 2024

    Returned to work, in a new role focused on significant technical challenges.1112

12. Sep 2025

    A $25 million donation to MAGA Inc. reached the super PAC on 12 September.13

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