Sam Altman

Samuel Harris Altman (born April 22, 1985) is an American technology entrepreneur, investor, and the chief executive officer of OpenAI since 2019 (he was briefly dismissed and reinstated in November 2023). He is considered one of the leading figures of the AI boom.

Altman dropped out of Stanford University after two years and founded Loopt, a mobile social networking service, raising more than $30million in venture capital. In 2011, Altman joined Y Combinator, a startup accelerator, and was its president from 2014 to 2019. He has served as chairman of clean energy companies Helion Energy and Oklo (until April 2025). Altman's net worth was estimated at $1.8billion as of June 2025.

Early life and education

Altman was born on April 22, 1985, in Chicago, Illinois, into a Jewish family, and grew up in St. Louis, Missouri. His mother was a dermatologist, and his father a real estate broker. Altman is the eldest of four siblings. At the age of eight, he received his first computer, an Apple Macintosh, and began to learn how to code and take apart computer hardware. He attended John Burroughs School, a private school in Ladue, Missouri. In 2005, after two years at Stanford University studying computer science, he dropped out without earning a bachelor's degree.

Career

Early career

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. 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 Y Combinator (YC), a startup accelerator that invests in a wide range of startups, initially working on a part-time basis. In February 2014, he was named president of YC by co-founder Paul Graham. In a 2014 blog post, Altman stated that the total valuation of YC companies had surpassed $65 billion, including Airbnb, Dropbox, Zenefits, and Stripe. He 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 April 2012, Altman co-founded Hydrazine Capital with his brother, Jack Altman. The venture capital firm is still in operation and focuses on early-stage tech investments.

In October 2015, Altman announced YC Continuity, a $700 million equity fund designed to invest in YC companies as they matured. A week earlier, he had introduced Y Combinator Research, a non-profit research lab, donating $10 million of his own funds to establish it.

In December 2015, Altman co-founded OpenAI, an artificial intelligence research organization, alongside notable figures such as Elon Musk, Jessica Livingston, and Peter Thiel. OpenAI was established with the goal of promoting and developing friendly AI for the benefit of humanity. The organization was initially funded with $1 billion in commitments from its founders and other investors, including Microsoft and Amazon Web Services.

In September 2016, Altman announced his expanded role as president of YC Group, which included Y Combinator and other units.

In March 2019, YC announced Altman's transition from president to a less hands-on role as chairman of the board, allowing him to focus on OpenAI. This decision came shortly after YC announced it would be moving its headquarters to San Francisco. As of early 2020, he was no longer affiliated with YC. It was later revealed that he had falsely claimed the board chair title (including in SEC filings), and that YCombinator partners never approved his appointment.

In 2019, Altman co-founded the for-profit company Tools For Humanity, which builds and distributes systems designed to scan people's eyes to provide authentication and verify proof of personhood to counter fraud. Participants who agree to have their eyes scanned are compensated with a cryptocurrency called Worldcoin. Tools For Humanity describes its cryptocurrency as similar to universal basic income. Tools For Humanity does not offer services in the United States, citing concerns over privacy and fraud. One of the first countries the company worked in was Kenya. Citing legal concerns over biometric data privacy and potential fraud concerns, regulators in France, the United Kingdom, Bavaria, South Korea, Kenya, Spain, Portugal, and Hong Kong have investigated or suspended WorldCoin.

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 that was acquired by General Motors; and Helion Energy, an American fusion research company.

OpenAI

OpenAI was initially funded by Altman, Greg Brockman, Elon Musk, Jessica Livingston, Peter Thiel, Microsoft, Amazon Web Services, Infosys and YCResearch. When OpenAI launched in 2015, it had raised $1billion. In March 2019, Altman left Y Combinator to focus full-time on OpenAI as CEO. By the summer of 2019, he had helped raise $1 billion from Microsoft.

Altman testified before the United States Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology and the Law on May 16, 2023, about issues of AI oversight. After the success of ChatGPT, the company's chatbot application, Altman made a world tour in May 2023, during which he visited 22 countries and met multiple leaders and diplomats, including British prime minister Rishi Sunak, French president Emmanuel Macron, Spanish prime minister Pedro Sánchez, German chancellor Olaf Scholz, Indian prime minister Narendra Modi, South Korean president Yoon Suk-yeol and Israeli president Isaac Herzog. He stood for a photo with European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen.

Removal and reinstatement as OpenAI CEO

On Friday, November 17, 2023, OpenAI's board, composed of researcher Helen Toner, Quora CEO Adam D'Angelo, AI governance advocate Tasha McCauley, and most prominently in the firing, OpenAI co-founder and chief scientist Ilya Sutskever, announced that they had made the decision to remove Altman as CEO and Greg Brockman from the board, both of whom were co-founders. The announcement cited that Altman "was not consistently candid in his communications" in a public announcement on the OpenAI blog. In response, Brockman resigned from his role as President of OpenAI. The day after Altman was removed, ''The Verge'' reported that Altman and the board were in talks to bring him back to OpenAI.

On November 20, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella announced that Altman would be joining Microsoft to lead a new advanced AI research team. Two days later, OpenAI employees published an open letter to the board threatening to leave OpenAI and join Microsoft, where all employees had been promised jobs, unless all board members step down and reinstate Altman as CEO. 505 employees initially signed, which later grew to over 700 out of 770 total employees. This included Ilya Sutskever, who had previously advocated for firing Altman, but now had apologized stating on Twitter, "I regret my participation in the board's actions." Late in the night on November 20, OpenAI announced that they had reached an "agreement in principle" for Altman to return as CEO and Brockman to return as president. The current board was to resign, other than D'Angelo, who was kept to represent the views of the previous board.

On March 8, 2024, OpenAI announced that Altman would rejoin the board of directors after a review by law firm WilmerHale.

In May 2024, after OpenAI's non-disparagement agreements were exposed, Altman was accused of lying when claiming to have been unaware of the equity cancellation provision for departing employees that don't sign the agreement. Also in May, former board member Helen Toner explained the board's rationale for firing Altman in November 2023. She stated that Altman had withheld information, for example about the release of ChatGPT and his ownership of OpenAI's startup fund. She also alleged that two executives in OpenAI had reported to the board "psychological abuse" from Altman, and provided screenshots and documentation to support their claims. She said that many employees feared retaliation if they didn't support Altman, and that when Altman was Loopt's CEO, the management team asked twice to fire him for what they called "deceptive and chaotic behavior".

Political engagement

Altman had contemplated running for governor of California in the 2018 election, but later decided not to enter. In 2018, Altman announced "the United Slate", a political project to improve U.S. housing and healthcare policy. In 2019, Altman held a fundraiser at his home in San Francisco for 2020 Democratic presidential candidate and fellow tech entrepreneur Andrew Yang. In May 2020, Altman donated $250,000 to American Bridge 21st Century, a super PAC supporting Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden.

Altman is a supporter of land value taxation and the payment of universal basic income (UBI). In 2021, he published a blog post titled "Moore's Law for Everything", which stated his belief that within ten years, AI could generate enough value to fund a UBI of $13,500 per year to every adult in the United States. In 2024, he suggested a new kind of UBI called "universal basic compute" to give everyone a "slice" of ChatGPT's computing power.

In 2023, Altman was involved in boosting Representative Dean Phillips as he prepared a challenge to President Joe Biden for the Democratic nomination.

On November 18, 2024, San Francisco Mayor-Elect Daniel Lurie named him to his transition team.

In December 2024, it was reported that Altman would donate $1 million to the Inaugural Fund for President Donald Trump.

Altman hosted a fundraiser in San Francisco on March 20, 2025, for Senator Mark Warner, a Democrat up for re-election in 2026 in Virginia.

Other endeavors

For eight days in 2014, Altman was the CEO of Reddit, a social media company, after CEO Yishan Wong resigned. On July 10, 2015, he announced the return of Steve Huffman as CEO. He remained on its board until 2022. Altman invested in multiple rounds of funding Reddit, in 2014, 2015, and 2021. Prior to Reddit's initial public offering in 2024, Altman was listed as its third-largest shareholder, with around nine percent ownership.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Altman helped fund and create Project Covalence to help researchers rapidly launch clinical trials in partnership with TrialSpark, a clinical trial startup. During the depositor run on Silicon Valley Bank in mid-March 2023, Altman provided capital to multiple startups. Altman invests in technology startups and nuclear energy companies. Some of his portfolio companies include Airbnb, Stripe and Retro Biosciences. He is also chairman of the board for Helion Energy, a company focused on developing nuclear fusion, and Oklo Inc., a nuclear fission company. He also invested in Exowatt, a solar energy startup that aims to provide clean energy to data centers.

In March 2021, Altman and investment banker Michael Klein co-founded AltC Acquisition Corp, a special-purpose acquisition company (SPAC), where he is also the CEO. In May 2024, Oklo Inc. completed a merger with the SPAC to become a public company. Altman remained as chairman of Oklo following the merger until stepping down in April 2025 to "avoid conflict of interest" and "open up opportunities for future deals between OpenAI and Oklo."

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.

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.

Along with Peter Thiel, Altman was an early seed investor in Minicircle, "a longevity biotech company focused on developing gene therapies to extend human lifespans." He also invested in charter city projects Próspera and Praxis, which have gotten additional financial support from author and former Coinbase CTO, Balaji Srinivasan. Both cities have been linked by various publications and journalists to the Network State movement.

Reception

In 2017, Altman received an honorary Doctor of Engineering degree from the University of Waterloo in Canada for supporting companies through its Velocity entrepreneurship program. The government of Indonesia issued the country's first " golden visa", a 10-year border pass, to Altman in September 2023. In 2024, Xfund awarded Altman the annual Experiment Cup at an event at Harvard University.

In 2023, Altman was named one of the 100 most influential people in the world and CEO of the Year by ''Time'' magazine. He was also on the Time's list of the 100 most influential people in AI in 2023 and in 2024. He was one of the "Best Young Entrepreneurs in Technology" by ''Businessweek'' in 2008, and the top investor under 30 by ''Forbes'' magazine in 2015. Altman was invited to attend the Bilderberg Meeting in 2016, 2022, and 2023.

Walter Isaacson opined that Altman had "Musk-like intensity" and that it had been instrumental in the founding of OpenAI in partnership with Elon Musk. In late February 2024 Musk sued OpenAI and Altman, alleging they broke the company's founding agreement by giving priority to profit over benefit to humanity. A few days later OpenAI executives, including Altman, dismissed these claims in a blog post. The post said that the startup received only $45million from Musk instead of his commitment of $1billion and that Musk proposed to merge it with Tesla.

Personal life

Altman has been a vegetarian since childhood.

Altman is gay, and first disclosed his sexuality at the age of 17 in high school, where he spoke out after some students objected to a National Coming Out Day speaker. He dated Loopt co-founder Nick Sivo for nine years. They broke up shortly after the company was acquired in 2012.

Altman married engineer Oliver Mulherin in January 2024, at their estate in Hawaii; the pair also live in San Francisco's Russian Hill neighborhood and often spend weekends in Napa, California. They committed to giving away most of their wealth by signing the Giving Pledge in May 2024.

Altman is an apocalypse preparer. He said in 2016: "I have guns, gold, potassium iodide, antibiotics, batteries, water, gas masks from the Israel Defense Forces, and a big patch of land in Big Sur I can fly to."

In January 2025, Altman's sister Ann Altman filed a lawsuit alleging sexual abuse by Altman in U.S. District Court in the Eastern District of Missouri in St. Louis. The lawsuit alleges that the abuse started when Ann Altman was aged three and Sam Altman was 12. Sam Altman, along with his mother Connie and younger brothers Max and Jack, issued a joint statement on the social media website X denying the allegations, describing them as "utterly untrue".

On February 22, 2025, Altman announced the birth of his son.Altman, Sam sama(February 22, 2025)
"welcome to the world, little guy! he came early and is going to be in the nicu for awhile. he is doing well and it’s really nice to be in a little bubble taking care of him. i have never felt such love."
( Tweet). Retrieved February 22, 2025 – via Twitter.

References

External links

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{{DEFAULTSORT:Altman, Sam
1985 births
Living people
21st-century American businesspeople
21st-century American Jews
21st-century American LGBTQ people
21st-century American philanthropists
American billionaires
American computer programmers
American LGBTQ businesspeople
Articles containing video clips
Businesspeople from Chicago
Businesspeople from St. Louis
American information technology businesspeople
Gay businessmen
Gay Jews
John Burroughs School alumni
LGBTQ people from Missouri
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Stanford University alumni
Y Combinator people