Sam Altman · OpenAI · Amazon · Greg Brockman · Fortune Technology
When OpenAI employees have a problem, they email this special address to see if Sam Altman will solve it immediately
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Operating at AI speed is not easy.
Key facts
- Each makes it only 1 or 2% harder to do your job, which is why they’re easy to ignore, but those frictions compound
- Although the friction email has existed within OpenAI for some time, the process didn’t catch on until the fall of 2025 when Fidji Simo joined the company as CEO of Applications
- It’s called “friction.” And it has the power to supersede about anything a team is doing, often carrying the force of CEO Sam Altman or President Greg Brockman with it
- She tasked Irina Kofman, OpenAI’s VP of strategic initiatives and operations, with monitoring the inbox and making sure select issues got resolved
Summary
It’s called “friction.” And it has the power to supersede about anything a team is doing, often carrying the force of CEO Sam Altman or President Greg Brockman with it. OpenAI’s leadership team triages the emails sent to friction@, moving forward with ones they deem worthy. A former OpenAI employee who spoke to Fortune praised the friction system as an effective way for leadership to get ground-level feedback. “It’s a good thing—anybody can complain about big company bullsh*t directly to Sam and they can act on it,” the former employee said. Although the friction email has existed within OpenAI for some time, the process didn’t catch on until the fall of 2025 when Fidji Simo joined the company as CEO of Applications.