OpenAI CEO Sam Altman says he envies Gen Z college dropouts who have the ‘mental space’ and time to launch new startups

Posted on by

Sam Altman, one of Silicon Valley’s most influential leaders, admits to feeling jealous of Gen Z college dropouts.

“I’m envious of today’s 20-year-old dropouts,” the OpenAI CEO told Rowan Cheung during an at the DevDay conference. “Because the variety of things you can build… the opportunity landscape is so incredibly broad.”

Altman said that over the past couple of years, he hasn’t had a “real block of free mental space” to think about what he’d create now. “But I know there would be plenty of cool projects to work on,” he noted.

Altman dropped out of Stanford University in 2005 after two years studying computer science. For the 19-year-old Altman at the time, it was an moment—he left Stanford to cofound the location-sharing app Loopt.

As the company’s CEO, Altman helped secure more than $30 million in funding, including investments from well-known VC firms like Sequoia Capital. Loopt participated in the Y Combinator startup accelerator, and after the app was acquired, he became YC’s president. Later, in December 2015, he cofounded OpenAI with a group of people, including Elon Musk, the world’s richest man.

Despite his successful rise in tech startups, Altman expressed a desire to brainstorm new business ventures.

“It’s a little sad how much OpenAI takes over all my mental space, leaving me no time to think about building a new startup,” Altman said.

Altman joins a roster of college dropouts who’ve become Silicon Valley tech leaders—names like Bill Gates, Larry Ellison, Steve Jobs, Jack Dorsey, and Mark Zuckerberg.

The tech billionaire also in August that he’s envious of young people because current entry-level jobs will seem “boring” compared to those in 10 years.

As Gen Z navigates a , higher education is under even more scrutiny as the right path for tech entrepreneurs and aspiring startup founders.

In September, GV CEO David Krane—and — shared that his son spent the entire summer break between college semesters working in AI and was questioning if higher education was a “scam.”

According to a new , only 41% of junior U.S. professionals believe a college degree is necessary for career success. Big tech company CEOs are echoing similar thoughts.

“There’s going to be a reckoning,” CEO Mark Zuckerberg Theo Von on an April episode of “This Past Weekend.” “Maybe not everyone needs to go to college,” he added, since many jobs don’t require it.

“People are probably coming around to that opinion a bit more now than they were, say, 10 years ago,” Zuckerberg noted.

A version of this story was published on on October 8, 2025.

More on Gen Z careers:

  • As , CEOs of , , and McDonald’s say opportunities still exist—if you have the right mindset
  • and the Fords of the economy need them—but both sides are failing to connect
  • . They’re the most deliberate job seekers so far