Background and career
Samuel Harris Altman (born April 22, 1985) is an American entrepreneur and investor who has been the chief executive officer (CEO) of the artificial intelligence company OpenAI since 2019. Altman attended Stanford University for two years before he dropped out and co-founded Loopt, a geosocial networking application for smartphones. Loopt was acquired by Green Dot Corporation for $43.4 million in March 2012. In 2011, Altman joined Y Combinator, a technology startup accelerator and venture capital firm, and was the company's president from 2014 to 2019. He is a billionaire, due to investments in over 400 companies including Reddit, Worldcoin, Helion Energy and Instacart. Altman co-founded OpenAI in 2015 and became its CEO in 2019, a role that made him a prominent figure of the AI boom. He supervised the launch of ChatGPT in November 2022. In 2023, he was ousted by the organization's board of directors for not being "consistently candid". The move was met with significant backlash from employees and investors, resulting in Altman's reinstatement five days later and the formation of a new board.
Altman was born in Chicago on April 22, 1985, to a Jewish American family. His mother, Connie Gibstine, is a dermatologist, and his father, Jerry Altman, was a real estate broker. He is the eldest of four siblings: he has two brothers, Max and Jack; and a sister, Annie. His paternal great-grandfather was born in Płock, Poland. In 1989, the Altman family moved to Jerry's hometown of Clayton, Missouri. At eight, Altman received his first computer—an Apple Macintosh—and began learning how to code and disassemble and examine computer hardware. He attended Wydown Middle School and briefly Clayton High School, both located in Clayton, Missouri, before moving to The John Burroughs School, a private institution in Ladue, Missouri. In 2005, after studying computer science for two years at Stanford University in Stanford, California, he dropped out without earning a bachelor's degree.
In 2005, at the age of 19, Altman co-founded Loopt, a location-based social networking mobile application. As CEO, he raised more than $30 million in venture capital for the company, including an initial investment of $5 million from Patrick Chung of Xfund and his team at New Enterprise Associates, followed by investments from Sequoia Capital and Y Combinator. The company bought geolocation data from cellular providers and attempted to make an early social network for users to see where their friends were in real time. The board of Loopt attempted, twice, to remove Altman from his role as CEO, but Altman's supporters defended him and stated the attempts were not serious. In March 2012, after Loopt failed to gain significant user traction, the company was acquired by the Green Dot Corporation for $43.4 million.
In 2011, Altman became a partner at startup accelerator Y Combinator (YC), initially working on a part-time basis. In February 2014, he became president of YC, replacing YC co-founder Paul Graham, who had been his mentor. Altman aimed to expand YC to fund 1,000 new companies per year and sought to broaden the types of companies funded, particularly focusing on "hard technology" startups. In October 2015, Altman was involved in expanding YC's scope. He invested in multiple startups such as Stripe, Inc.. In September 2016, Altman's role at YC expanded to president of YC Group, which included Y Combinator and other units. By 2018, Altman's role at OpenAI made him less often present at YC, and several YC partners had complained to Graham that Altman was using his role to have the priority in investment opportunities. Graham said that Altman had agreed to leave YC, but was resisting in practice. YC moved its headquarters to San Francisco in 2019. In March, Altman and YC began to falsely claim that Altman had transitioned from president to a less hands-on role as chairman of the board, allowing him to focus on OpenAI. Graham was "unambiguous that Altman was removed because of Y.C. partners' mistrust".
As of June 2024, Altman's investment portfolio includes stakes in over 400 companies, valued at around $2.8 billion. Some of these investments intersect with companies doing business with OpenAI, which has raised questions about potential conflicts of interest. OpenAI's chairman of the board, Bret Taylor, maintained that Altman has been transparent about his investments. In April 2012, Altman co-founded Hydrazine Capital with his brother, Jack Altman. The initial $21 million fund included a large part of the $5 million he got from selling Loopt, but most came from Peter Thiel, his mentor and main backer in Silicon Valley. Sam Altman invested 75 percent of the money in Y-Combinator companies. In 2023, when Hydrazine launched its fourth fund, the University of Michigan endowment was the only outside investor. Its investments in Hydrazine were the largest the endowment has made. Altman debuted on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index in March 2024 with an estimated net worth of $2 billion, primarily from his venture capital funds related to Hydrazine Capital. He was invited to attend the Bilderberg Meeting in 2016, 2022, and 2023.
Altman has several other investments in companies including Humane, which was developing a wearable AI-powered device; Retro Biosciences, a research company aiming to extend human life by 10 years; Boom Technology, a supersonic airline developer; Cruise, a self-driving car company later acquired by General Motors; and Helion Energy, an American fusion research company.
