Justin Sullivan / Getty / Joseph Velyan
Joseph Velyan was eating lunch at a restaurant with his family when he spotted something extraordinary rolling down the street: a Koenigsegg Regera.
Only 80 of these Swedish sports cars were made — and they can cost as much as $4.65 million.
"I've been into cars almost my whole life, and seeing a Koenigsegg was definitely a dream of mine — especially in public," Velyan, who runs the car fan pages @norcal.garage on TikTok and Instagram told Business Insider. "I go to car events and see some pretty rare cars often, but this is for sure the rarest one I've seen, and it caught my eye right away."
He took a quick video of the car and posted it online in late April. But it wasn't until more than a month later, when he looked back at the footage, that he noticed something else interesting: The driver appeared to be Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI. (Representatives for Sam Altman didn't respond to a request for comment from BI.)
Like Velyan, Altman is a Car Guy. According to a Wall Street Journal story about his vast fortune, he owns a McLaren in addition to the Koenigsegg and drove F1 cars on a racetrack for fun on vacation with his husband in Dubai.
He also has mentioned owning a Telsa. (This might be amusing to Elon Musk, the former friend and current frenemy of Altman, who had an amused reaction to the video after Musk's henchman friend Jason Calacanis pointed out the irony of the head of a nonprofit driving such a fancy car. (Musk's beef with Altman is largely over how OpenAI has shifted from its nonprofit roots. And, of course, Altman has been an investor in companies including Reddit and Stripe, accounting for a fortune that's been estimated at around $3 billion.)
In the video of Altman in the Koenigsegg, there's something totally uncanny about seeing such an unusual car — which looks unlike anything else and is capable of going zero to 250 miles per hour in under 30 seconds — at a stop light in a busy pedestrian area. Velyan is right — you'd expect to see something like this at a car show or a track, not a city street in Napa, CA.
There's something else sort of weird — tech moguls, for as rich as they are, don't typically drive incredibly noticeably ostentatious cars.
Sure, they might own a fancy car in their collection (Mark Zuckerberg reportedly has a $1.4 million Pagani Huayra), but you don't typically see them driving them past a CVS in a supercar on a Tuesday.
Koenigseggs are so rare that there's a fan community that keeps track of each model on a blog called Egg Registry. Based on the distinctive all-white paint job of the car in the video, it seems likely to be No. 7232, which the fans on the blog have traced to an owner in San Francisco. (BI couldn't independently verify this.) They say it's been seen driving around the streets and showing up to a local car show.
The hoi polloi can often be a little harsh on seeing displays of tech mogul wealth (just check the comments anytime Zuckerberg posts himself surfing). But on TikTok, a lot of ChatGPT users seem pretty happy for Altman and his car.
"This man helped me pass chem ???? enjoy that Regera" wrote one person."
"Bro carried me through half of my classes last year I hope he enjoys that beauty," said another.
"Countless assignments, countless tests passed enjoy it bro."
