OpenAI CEO Sam Altman says he is ‘envious’ of Gen Z college dropouts who have the ‘mental space’ and time to build new startups
Sam Altman, one of the most powerful leaders in Silicon Valley, is jealous of Gen Z college dropouts.
“I’m envious of the current generation of 20-year-old dropouts,” the OpenAI CEO told Rowan Cheung during an interview at the DevDay conference. “Because the amount of stuff you can build… the opportunity space is so incredibly wide.”
Altman said in the past couple of years he has not had a “real chunk of free mental space” to think about what he’d build now. “But I know that there would be a lot of cool stuff to build,” he said.
Altman dropped out of Stanford University in 2005 after two years of studying computer science. An “unexpected opportunity arose” for 19-year-old Altman, who left Stanford to cofound the location-sharing app Loopt.
As CEO of the company, Altman helped bring in more than $30 million in funding including from notable VC firms like Sequoia Capital. Loopt went through startup accelerator Y Combinator, and after the app was acquired, he became the president of YC. He later cofounded OpenAI in December 2015 with a slew of people, including the world’s richest man, Elon Musk.
Despite his rise to success with tech startups, Altman said he longs to brainstorm other businesses.
“The degree to which OpenAI is, like, taking over all of my mental space, and I don’t get to go think about how to build a new startup, is a little bit sad,” Altman said.
Altman joins a list of college dropouts that have become tech leaders in Silicon Valley, including Bill Gates, Larry Ellison, Steve Jobs, Jack Dorsey, and Mark Zuckerberg.
The tech billionaire also said in August he’s envious of young people because current early-career jobs will look “boring” by comparison to jobs in 10 years’ time.
As Gen Z is in the midst of a job crisis, higher education is being scrutinized even more as the right path for tech entrepreneurs and startup hopefuls.
In September, GV CEO David Krane—and employee No. 84 at Google—said his son spent the entire summer break between college semesters working in AI, and was questioning if higher education was a “scam.”
Only 41% of junior U.S. professionals say a college degree is necessary for career success, according to a new LinkedIn Workforce Confidence survey. And CEOs of big tech companies are echoing similar sentiments.
“There’s going to have to be a reckoning,” Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg told Theo Von in a “This Past Weekend” episode in April. “Maybe not everyone needs to go to college,” because there are a lot of jobs that don’t require it, he added.
“People are probably coming around to that opinion a little more now than maybe, like, 10 years ago,” Zuckerberg said.
A version of this story published on Fortune.com on October 8, 2025.
More on Gen Z careers:
- As millions of Gen Zers face unemployment, CEOs of Amazon, Walmart, and McDonald’s say opportunity is still there—if you have the right mindset
- Gen Z is open-minded about blue-collar work and the Fords of the economy need them—but both sides are missing each other
- Gen Z isn’t lazy. They’re the most intentional job seekers yet
This story was originally featured on Fortune.com