Who Is Sam Altman?

Sam Altman is an American programmer and entrepreneur funding and innovating within the AI space. Since dropping out of Stanford to co-found Loopt, he’s participated in ventures like Y Combinator, OpenAI and Worldcoin. 

Quick facts

Name: Samuel Harris Altman

Date of birth: April 22, 1985 in Chicago, Illinois

Education: 

• John Burroughs School in St. Louis, Missouri
• Stanford University (dropout)

Net worth (as of July 2023): Estimated between $250 and $500 million

Partner(s): 

• Nick Sivo (partners, 2003-2012)
• Oliver Mulherin (partners, 2023-present)

Investment style: Value; venture capitalism

Known for: 

• Dropping out of Stanford to co-found Loopt
• Helping launch multiple high-profile tech companies as head of Y Combinator
• Co-founding OpenAI with Elon Musk in 2015
• Championing and funding the advancement of AI
• Advocating for international cooperation to research, coordinate, and regulate powerful AI models

Notable facts: 

• Sold his first company for $43.4 million at just 27
• A “prepper” who stashes “guns, gold, potassium iodide, antibiotics, batteries, water, gas masks…and a big patch of land in Big Sur.” 
• Received an honorary Doctor of Engineering degree from the University of Waterloo in 2017
• Named one of TIME magazine’s 100 most influential people in 2023

Famous quotes:  

• “AI will probably most likely lead to the end of the world, but in the meantime, there’ll be great companies.” 
• “The way to build billion dollar companies is to first build something people love. There isn’t really a shortcut there.”
• “You want to invest in messy, somewhat broken companies. You can treat the warts on top, and because of the warts, the company will be hugely underpriced.”
• About Chat GPT: “[It is] incredibly limited, but good enough at some things to create a misleading impression of greatness.” 

The early years

Sam Altman’s love of tech began at just 8, when he learned to program and deconstruct his first computer. He attended Stanford University for computer science, but dropped out after two years to co-found location-based social app Loopt. Though the app didn’t gain much traction, it still sold for $43.4 million in 2012. Altman was just 27. 

Programming his future 

Altman soon dove into an influential series of adventures. 

In 2011, he became a part-time partner at tech startup accelerator Y Combinator. Co-founder Paul Graham tapped Altman as the next president in 2014. 

In 2015, Altman co-founded OpenAI with Elon Musk, courtesy of funding from big names like Microsoft, Amazon and Peter Thiel. 

The next year, Altman took on an expanded role at YC Group. He launched equity funds to invest in maturing tech firms and a nonprofit research arm to investigate everything from basic income to building new cities. 

In 2019, Altman plowed ahead with biometric cryptocurrency project Worldcoin.

By 2020, Altman left Y Combinator to serve as OpenAI’s CEO. Under his purview, OpenAI launched generative AI tools like DALL-E and ChatGPT. 

Legacy 

Altman has dedicated much of his focus and fortune to tech startups and nuclear energy projects. Through his connections and work, he’s had a hand in (and sometimes served on the board of) companies like: 

• Airbnb
• Asana
• Helion
• Instacart
• Oklo
• Pinterest
• Reddit
• Stripe

Altman has also outspokenly advocated to advance AI’s upsides, while warning of AI’s downsides. And increasingly, he works with world leaders to encourage international research and collaboration to oversee, regulate, and mitigate the potential dangers posed by AI.