OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is offering his personal capital to startups affected by Friday's collapse of Silicon Valley Bank.
Altman extended six figures worth of emergency funds to the radiology automation startup Rad AI, which needed the funds to pay its employees.
- Altman offered the funds to Rad AI CEO Doktor Gurson within two hours of the request, noting that Gurson could pay him back only when he can.
- "The crazy thing here is he's not an investor in our company," Gurson said. "He didn't ask for anything."
- Altman, the former CEO of Y Combinator, told Reuters, "I remember the investors who helped me out when I was running a startup and I really needed it, and I always try to pay it forward."
- Altman also tweeted to his followers on Friday, "Today is a good day to offer emergency cash to your startups that need it for payroll or whatever. No docs, no terms, just send money."
- Regulators seized Silicon Valley Bank and placed it into receivership on Friday, marking the largest U.S. bank failure since 2008 and the second largest in U.S. history.
- Regulators have since announced that all Silicon Valley Bank's depositors, including those not insured by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (FDIC), will have access to their money as of today, March 13.
- The takeover occurred a day after the bank's customers attempted to withdraw $42B in a single day.
- Nearly half of U.S. venture capital-backed startups have used the tech-focused lender. Many startups had their capital held in SVB, and some were scrambling to raise emergency funds from VCs to meet payroll and operational cash requirements.
