OpenAI’s Sam Altman says his highly disciplined daily routine has ‘fallen to crap’—and now unwinds on weekends at a ranch with no cell phone service

As Open AI prepares for a potential trillion-dollar IPO, and revels its in recent victory over Elon Musk who claimed the company tried to “steal a charity”, CEO Sam Altman has had his hands full. But earlier this year, Altman, 41, said he’s taking things more slowly—at least on the weekends—focusing on his family and scaling Open AI. Altman and his husband, Australian software engineer Oliver Mulherin, welcomed a son in February 2025. A year into parenthood, he said the experience is “significantly underhyped.” “It has been my favorite thing ever in life by far,” Altman told Forbes in February. “And I don’t think I have anything deep or non-cliché to say about it, other than I thought it was going to be great, and it’s much better than I thought it was going to be.” Fatherhood has come with many changes, including upending Altman’s disciplined daily routine. Before, to maximize his productivity, he focused on and made time for sleep, exercise, and nutrition, he detailed in a 2018 blog post. But now, gone are the days of lifting weights and meditating three times a week. “Now it has all fallen to crap,” he says. “I’ve just accepted that life is going to be chaotic for a few years.” Altman has always been very vocal about prioritizing family and friends, saying that neglecting loved ones to be more productive is “a very stupid tradeoff.” Parenthood has only sharpened that sensibility. “The baseline that something has to beat for me to be willing to spend time on it is so huge now that most other things fell away,” he said. Since giving this interview, Altman and his family have become the target for violent, anti-AI backlash. In April, a 20-year-old man allegedly threw a Molotov cocktail at Altman’s San Francisco home in the middle of the night and allegedly threatened to burn down an OpenAI office. In response, Altman responded to the attack on his blog, where he called out an “incendiary article,” a likely reference to a recent 16,0