How Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, Sam Altman, and other tech execs parent their children

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman told Jimmy Fallon that ChatGPT has helped him raise his baby. He said he "cannot imagine" having figured out how to parent a newborn without the technology. He's asked, for example, why his kid wasn't crawling at a certain age.

Altman has also said that his baby "will never be smarter than AI," but will be "more capable." He told the Senate that he doesn't want his kid to form a best-friend-like bond with an AI bot.

And when it comes to cribs, Altman has said he has a clear favorite: Cradlewise. It costs nearly $2,000 and gently bounces the baby to get ahead of any fussing. The crib also includes a built-in baby monitor and music features.

Altman also said he's learned the importance of having a lot of burp rags.

When asked in 2024 what kids should be studying today, Zuckerberg told Bloomberg that "the most important thing is learning how to think critically and learning values when you're young."

"This is somewhat of a hiring philosophy that I have, too," he said. "If people have shown that they can go deep and do one thing really well, then they've probably gained experience in the art of learning something and taking it to an excellent level."

He also said in a 2024 interview that, when taking his then-seven-year-old daughter to a Taylor Swift concert, he told her that being like the superstar wasn't "available" to her. A therapist in California who has worked with wealthy parents told Business Insider that encouraging her to instead be herself was the right approach.

In a 2019 interview on CBS This Morning, the Meta CEO said he and his wife, Priscilla Chan, "don't give them everything."

"They have chores, they have responsibilities," Chan added. "We also take them to work. Mark and I take both of them to the office to see what we do, how we contribute."

That same year, he told Fox News that he generally doesn't want his kids parked in front of a television or computer "for a long period of time." At the time, he said he let his daughters use video calls to talk with relatives across the country but is stricter about other forms of screen time.

Nadella says his own parents "created an environment where they let me set my own pace and pursue what I wanted," and that influenced his approach to raising his own children.

"It's important to focus on what [our kids] need to thrive," he previously told Good Housekeeping.

The Microsoft CEO and his wife, Anu, also "both think children should have dogs," she told Good Housekeeping.

"There is a different sense of companionship and responsibility that comes with it — that emotional sense that there is a being waiting for you to come back," Anu said.

Nadella told Good Housekeeping that he gets reports on what their kids do on their computers. The couple limits how many movies and what kinds of video games and websites their kids can view.

Nadella has also said that his experience raising a son with cerebral palsy has taught him the importance of empathy, including at work.

Pichai still helps his kids with their homework — with some assistance from Google Lens.

"We use Google Lens for homework. I don't want to get him in trouble, but the class allows you to do that," Pichai previously told Bloomberg. "But sometimes he asks me for help on math. Sometimes I'm lazy and I pretend as if I'm thinking, but I'm also using Google Lens to kind of figure out the answer."

The Google CEO told The New York Times in 2018 that his son, then 11 years old, didn't have a phone, and that he limited his son's TV use.

Microsoft cofounder Bill Gates has said he parented his kids following a model developed in the 1970s called the "Love and Logic" approach.

The philosophy focuses on exercising control when it comes to emotions, such as by minimizing some reactions as a parent, like shouting or reprimanding. Gates said his dad believed in the same philosophy, and that "he was never panicked."

Gates, who for many years was the world's richest man, has also said he tried to keep his kids from being spoiled.

"We want to strike a balance where they have the freedom to do anything, but not a lot of money showered on them so they could go out and do nothing," he once said.

As far as screen time limits go, Gates forbade his kids from using phones at the dinner table, and didn't give them phones until they were 14 years old.

In a 2025 episode of the podcast "Raj Shamani's Figuring it Out," Gates said he was giving his children less than 1% of his total wealth, "because I decided it wouldn't be a favor to them."

"I want to give them a chance to have their own earnings and success be significant," Gates added.

Bezos took an unusual approach to raising his four kids at times. He said in 2017 that he let his kids use "sharp knives" from the age of 4 and power tools at 7 or 8 years old.

The Amazon founder attributed this to his then-wife, MacKenzie Scott, who he said would "much rather have a kid with nine fingers than a resourceless kid." Bezos added that this was "a fantastic attitude about life."

Reddit cofounder Alexis Ohanian incorporated a fun practice from his upbringing into his approach to parenting.

"My favorite parenting tip that I inherited from him was his Sunday tradition of making breakfast for our family," he said in 2020. "I love being able to make pancakes with my family when we're all in the same place on a Sunday, and always do my best to put away outside distractions so we can be together."

On a 2025 podcast episode, Ohanian said he "wholeheartedly" wanted his then-seven-year-old daughter to use AI every day. He said he's used the technology to enhance her creativity: he had ChatGPT turn some of his childhood pencil sketches into "full-color illustrations." His daughter, Ohanian said, still draws with old-fashioned markers and paper as well.

Ohanian told CNBC in 2018 that he and tennis star Serena Williams want their daughter "to know what it's like to have limits on tech."

"My wife and I both want her to be bored," he said. "I do look forward to playing video games with her when she's older, but it's really important that she gets time to just be with her thoughts and be with her blocks and be with her toys, so we'll be regulating it pretty heavily."

Snap CEO Evan Spiegel said in 2018 that he and his wife, supermodel Miranda Kerr, limited their then-seven-year-old's screen time to an hour and a half a week. The rule, he said, was partly influenced by not being allowed to watch television until he was almost a teenager.

He said that parents should lead by example and work to limit their own screen time as well.

Spiegel told People in 2025 that he's glad his kids are growing up with digital tools, and Kerr said they don't let their 14-year-old have phones or computers in his bedroom past 9:30 pm.