Sam Altman says a Goldman Sachs internship would be dreadful and declined it

During a recent Internapalooza talk, Sam Altman described how he was "peer pressured and tricked" into applying for a Goldman Sachs internship in his sophomore year, a move that was considered prestigious at the time. He chose to decline the position, opting instead to work on his startup Loopt and later join Y Combinator, eventually becoming its president before founding OpenAI. Altman argued that banking's rigid hierarchy leaves little room for innovation, whereas startups now allow individuals to launch ventures with minimal resources, aided by AI.

OpenAI, fresh from a $7 billion share sale and eyeing a potential trillion-dollar IPO, is now recruiting former investment bankers, including senior figures like Alisha Lehr, to train AI models for financial tasks. The firm plans to grow its workforce to 8,000 by the end of the year and expects finance hires to be proficient with AI tools such as Codex, a view echoed by CFO Sarah Friar. Competitors like Anthropic are also deploying AI agents for banking workflows, underscoring a broader shift toward AI in finance.