Altman was born on April 22, 1985, in Chicago, Illinois,[7][8] into a Jewish family,[9] and grew up in St. Louis, Missouri. His mother is a dermatologist, while his father was a real estate broker. Altman is the eldest of four siblings.[10] 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.[11][12] He attended John Burroughs School, a private school in Ladue, Missouri.[13] In 2005, after two years at Stanford University studying computer science, he dropped out without earning a bachelor's degree.[14][15]
In 2005, at the age of 19,[16] Sam Altman co-founded Loopt,[17] 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.[18] In March 2012, after Loopt failed to gain significant user traction, the company was acquired by the Green Dot Corporation for $43.4 million.[19]
In April 2012, Altman co-founded Hydrazine Capital with his brother, Jack Altman.[20][21] The venture capital firm is still in operation and focuses on early-stage tech investments.[22]
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.[23] In February 2014, he was named president of YC by co-founder Paul Graham.[24] In a 2014 blog post, Altman stated that the total valuation of YC companies had surpassed $65 billion, including Airbnb, Dropbox, Zenefits, and Stripe.[25] 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.[26]
In October 2015, Altman announced YC Continuity, a $700 million equity fund designed to invest in YC companies as they matured.[27][28] A week earlier, he had introduced Y Combinator Research, a non-profit research lab, donating $10 million of his own funds to establish it.[29]
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.[30][31] 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.[32]
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.[33][34] This decision came shortly after YC announced it would be moving its headquarters to San Francisco.[35] As of early 2020, he was no longer affiliated with YC.[36]
In 2019, Altman co-founded Tools For Humanity,[37] a company that 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.[38][39][40][41] Tools For Humanity describes its cryptocurrency as similar to universal basic income.[42][43] A Hong Kong regulator directed Worldcoin to cease operations there, stating that scanning and collecting iris and face images was "unnecessary and excessive".[44]
Altman has several other investments in companies including Humane, which is developing a wearable AI-powered device; Retro Biosciences, a research company aiming to extend human life by 10 years;[45] and Helion Energy, an American fusion research company.
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.[50] The announcement cited that Altman "was not consistently candid in his communications" in a public announcement on the OpenAI blog.[51][50] In response, Brockman resigned from his role as President of OpenAI.[52] The day after Altman was removed, The Verge reported that Altman and the board were in talks to bring him back to OpenAI.[53] On November 20, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella announced that Altman would be joining Microsoft to lead a new advanced AI research team.[54] 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.[55] 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.[56][57] The current board was to resign, other than D'Angelo, who was kept to represent the views of the previous board.[56]
On March 8, 2024, OpenAI announced that Altman would rejoin the board of directors after a review by law firm WilmerHale.[58]
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.[59] 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".[60][61]
For eight days in 2014, Altman was the CEO of Reddit, a social media company, after CEO Yishan Wong resigned.[62][63] He announced the return of Steve Huffman as CEO on July 10, 2015.[64] He remained on its board until 2022.[65] Altman invested in multiple rounds of funding Reddit, in 2014, 2015, and 2021.[65][66] Prior to Reddit's initial public offering in 2024, Altman was listed as its third-largest shareholder, with around nine percent ownership.[67]
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.[68] During the depositor run on Silicon Valley Bank in mid-March 2023, Altman provided capital to multiple startups.[69] Altman invests in technology startups and nuclear energy companies. Some of his portfolio companies include Airbnb, Stripe and Retro Biosciences.[70] He is also chairman of the board for Helion Energy, a company focused on developing nuclear fusion, and Oklo Inc., a nuclear fission company.[71][72]
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.[2][73] 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.[74]
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.[75]
Sam Altman has recently expanded his investment portfolio to include 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, though Altman and OpenAI maintain that these are managed transparently. Additionally, Altman has been involved in discussions about the future of AI, focusing on ethical challenges and the role of AI in scientific discovery.[citation needed]
In 2017, Altman received an honoraryDoctor of Engineering degree from the University of Waterloo in Canada for supporting companies through its Velocity entrepreneurship program.[76] The government of Indonesia issued the country's first "golden visa", a 10-year border pass, to Altman in September 2023.[77] In 2024, Xfund awarded Altman the annual Experiment Cup at an event at Harvard University.[78]
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.[89] 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.[90] A few days later OpenAI executives, including Altman, dismissed these claims in a blog post.[91] 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.[92]
Altman is openly gay.[94][95][96] He disclosed his sexuality at the age of 17[94] in high school,[95][96] where he spoke out after some students objected to a National Coming Out Day speaker.[94][97] He dated Loopt co-founder Nick Sivo for nine years. They broke up shortly after the company was acquired in 2012.[95]
In 2021, Altman's sister Annie wrote a message on Twitter accusing him of "sexual, physical, emotional, verbal, and financial abuse".[98][99]
Altman married engineer Oliver Mulherin in January 2024,[100] at their estate in Hawaii;[101] the pair also live in San Francisco's Russian Hill neighborhood and often spend weekends in Napa, California.[96][102] They committed to giving away most of their wealth by signing the Giving Pledge in May 2024.[103]
Altman had contemplated running for governor of California in the 2018 election, but later decided not to enter.[105] In 2018, Altman announced "the United Slate", a political project to improve U.S. housing and healthcare policy.[106] In 2019, Altman held a fundraiser at his home in San Francisco for 2020 Democratic presidential candidate and fellow tech entrepreneur Andrew Yang.[107] In May 2020, Altman donated $250,000 to American Bridge 21st Century, a super PAC supporting Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden.[108]
Altman is a supporter of land value taxation[109] and the payment of universal basic income (UBI).[110] In 2021, he wrote a blog post titled, "Moore's Law for Everything," which stated his belief that within ten years' time, AI could generate $13,500 of yearly UBI in the United States.[111] In 2024, he suggested a new kind of UBI called "universal basic compute" to give everyone a "slice" of ChatGPT's computing power.[110]
On November 18, 2024, San Francisco Mayor-Elect Daniel Lurie named him to his transition team.[112]
In December 2024, it was reported that Altman would donate $1 million to the Inaugural Fund for President-elect Trump.[113]
^Chapman, Glenn; Bachner, Michael; Magid, Jacob; Ben-David, Ricky; Schneider, Tal; Magid, Jacob; Bachner, Michael; Sharon, Jeremy (May 17, 2023). "Sam Altman: The quick, deep thinker leading OpenAI". The Times of Israel. Archived from the original on June 1, 2023. Retrieved November 24, 2023.