Sam Altman doesn’t seem to respect olive oil

Openai CEO Sam Altman humorously reports that the Financial Times humorously uses olive oil in its “horticultural attacks.”

For the “Ft Lunch” series, this paper joined Altman in his kitchen. He took an unusual break from his tough job of preparing garlic pasta and salads and defending the uproar of American copyright law.

Altman uses Graza Olive Oil, which comes in a beautifully branded squeeze bottle that is popular on social media (he’s a millennial after all). But Altman’s preference for expensive and “trendy” oils is not a crime. The crime is that he appears to be fundamentally misunderstanding Glaza’s Schtick. The company sells clearly marked “sizzle” and “drishes” to fry and finish each olive oil varieties.

To be fair, Spanish olive cultivation is not exactly a general knowledge. However, if you are dedicated to cooking skills where you stock two olive oils in your kitchen counter, you will know that one bottle is much more expensive than the other bottles, as it is intended to be used as a post-cooked “drizzle” rather than a fried oil.

Altman used a “drizzle” finish oil in his saute pan, despite the “Sizzle” oil being just a few inches apart. It’s like taking fresh basil and cooking it in a pot as if it was spinach. It’s a waste of valuable ground materials. At that rate, you can just throw dollar bills at the pan. This is not, by coincidence, a playbook for Silicon Valley startups.

Openai raised a record $40 billion in this year’s new funding round, but reportedly lost about $5 billion last year. It is not clear how the company will make profits at such monumental costs. Openai lost money on the ChatGPT Pro plan, which costs $200 a month.

The false dish of Altman probably doesn’t shed much light on Openai’s finances. But if you’re the kind of person who wastes expensive cooking oil, you might be burning VC money too.