READ THE STATEMENT · ACCESS
Sam Altman Wants AI Widely Shared. Black Founders Got 0.32% of the Money.
(None of the U.S. AI startups that raised $100 million or more in 2024 had a Black founder.)
By Ethan Ward · Oct. 18, 2026
Sam Altman, OpenAI’s CEO, has written for more than a year that AI has to be shared widely. He put it near the center of “The Gentle Singularity,” a June 2025 post on his personal blog. The money that builds AI companies goes to a much narrower group.
THE STATEMENT · SAM ALTMAN · JUNE 10, 2025 · BLOG.SAMALTMAN.COM
We do need to solve the safety issues, technically and societally, but then it’s critically important to widely distribute access to superintelligence given the economic implications. (1. Most of ChatGPT’s 900 million weekly users don’t pay. That is access to use AI, not a share in building it.)
[He lists solving alignment first. The next line is his second step.]
Then focus on making superintelligence cheap, widely available, and not too concentrated with any person, company, or country. (2. In 2025, startups with a Black founder or co-founder got 0.32% of U.S. venture funding.)
The passage from “The Gentle Singularity.” The gray line marks where the page is cut between the title and the passage.
SCREENSHOT: BLOG.SAMALTMAN.COM, JUNE 10, 2025
Our notes
Startups with a Black founder or co-founder raised about $942 million in 2025, 0.32% of U.S. venture funding, according to Crunchbase. Through May 20 of this year, they had raised $643 million, most of it one $350 million round for SambaNova.
“None of the U.S. artificial intelligence startups that raised $100 million or more in funding last year were Black-founded companies,” Crunchbase reported in February 2025, about 2024.
Startups with at least one woman founder got a record 27.7% of U.S. venture deal value in 2025, according to PitchBook. AI made up about two-thirds of that money, and more than $30 billion went to two companies, Anthropic and Scale AI.
LGBTQ+ founders raised 0.5% of the $2.1 trillion in U.S. startup funding from 2000 to 2022, according to StartOut. Nobody publishes a count for founders who are both Black and queer. The Diversity Data Alliance, formed in 2024 to standardize demographic data on founders, hasn’t released funding data.
OpenAI has opened some doors. The OpenAI Foundation committed $50 million to a fund for nonprofits this year, and OpenAI Academy offers free courses. We found no OpenAI program aimed at founders from underfunded groups.
What you can do
Look up who funded a company. Crunchbase profiles list funding rounds and investors, and free accounts show some of it. The SEC’s free EDGAR search shows a company’s Form D filings, with the amount raised and its officers.
Women who own a U.S. business can apply for the $15,000 Amber Grant by Oct. 31.
LGBTQ+ founders can join the waitlist for StartOut’s next Growth Lab cohort.
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How we reported this
The statement is from Sam Altman’s June 10, 2025, blog post “The Gentle Singularity.” Funding figures are from Crunchbase News (May 28, 2026, and Feb. 6, 2025), PitchBook’s 2025 report on women founders, and StartOut’s Pride Index. We checked the Diversity Data Alliance’s site and OpenAI’s programs on Oct. 18.
Rejected, suspended, or flagged for no reason? Tell me what happened.
The notice rarely says AI. It says “not selected” or “account suspended.” I read every tip myself.
