Sam Altman

Sam Altman
Born	Samuel Harris Altman 22 4, 1985
Birthplace	Chicago, Illinois, U.S.
Nationality	American
Occupation	Template:Flatlist
Known for	CEO of OpenAI, President of Y Combinator, Co-founder of Loopt
Education	Stanford University (dropped out)
Children	1
Website	[[blog.samaltman.com blog.samaltman.com] Official site]

Samuel Harris Altman (born April 22, 1985) is an American technology executive, entrepreneur, and investor who has served as the chief executive officer (CEO) of OpenAI, the artificial intelligence research organization, since 2019. Under his leadership, OpenAI launched ChatGPT in November 2022, a product that brought large language models into mainstream public awareness and catalyzed a global wave of investment and development in artificial intelligence. Before leading OpenAI, Altman built his reputation in Silicon Valley first as a startup founder—co-founding the mobile geolocation company Loopt while still a teenager—and then as a prominent investor and accelerator leader, serving as president of Y Combinator from 2014 to 2019. In November 2023, Altman was briefly ousted as CEO of OpenAI by the organization's board of directors, an event that drew intense public and media scrutiny before he was reinstated five days later amid pressure from employees and investors. Beyond artificial intelligence, Altman has pursued investments in clean energy, serving as chairman of the fusion energy company Helion Energy and the nuclear technology company Oklo, positions from which he stepped down in April 2025. In 2025, Time named Altman among the "Architects of AI" as part of its Person of the Year designation.

Early Life

Samuel Harris Altman was born on April 22, 1985, in Chicago, Illinois. He grew up in St. Louis, Missouri, where he was raised in a Jewish family. Altman developed an early interest in computers and technology. He received his first computer, a Macintosh, at the age of eight, an event he has cited as formative in sparking his interest in programming and technology.

Altman attended John Burroughs School, a private preparatory school in the St. Louis area. He came out as gay during high school, a fact he has discussed publicly in subsequent years. His early exposure to both technology and entrepreneurship helped shape a trajectory that would lead him to Silicon Valley shortly after graduating from high school.

A 2016 profile in The New Yorker described Altman as possessing an early confidence in his abilities and a conviction that technology could be used to address large-scale problems. His upbringing in the Midwest, far from the established technology hubs of California, did not deter him from pursuing a career in the industry; by his late teens, he was already planning his entry into the startup world.

Education

Altman enrolled at Stanford University in California, where he studied computer science. However, he did not complete his degree. After two years at Stanford, Altman dropped out to co-found Loopt, a mobile geolocation startup, in 2005. The decision to leave Stanford placed Altman in a lineage of notable Silicon Valley figures—including Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and Mark Zuckerberg—who left elite universities to pursue entrepreneurial ventures. Altman has spoken about the decision as a calculated risk, motivated by the opportunity he saw in the nascent smartphone application market.

Career

Loopt (2005–2012)

In 2005, at the age of 19, Altman co-founded Loopt, a smartphone-based geosocial networking application that allowed users to share their location with friends and discover nearby businesses and events. Loopt was one of the first companies funded by Y Combinator, the influential Silicon Valley startup accelerator founded by Paul Graham. The company was part of Y Combinator's inaugural Summer 2005 batch, a cohort that helped establish the accelerator model that would become a dominant feature of the startup ecosystem.

Over the course of its existence, Loopt raised more than US$30 million in venture capital funding. The company attracted investment from notable Silicon Valley venture capital firms and operated during a period when location-based mobile services were an emerging category. Loopt was available on multiple mobile platforms and partnered with several major U.S. wireless carriers to distribute its application.

Despite the significant capital raised, Loopt struggled to achieve the user growth necessary to compete in the increasingly crowded location-based services market, which included rivals such as Foursquare and Gowalla. In March 2012, Loopt was acquired by the prepaid debit card company Green Dot Corporation for approximately US$43.4 million. While the acquisition did not represent a major financial return relative to the capital invested, the experience of founding and running Loopt gave Altman direct operational experience in the startup world and deepened his connections within Silicon Valley's investment and entrepreneurial communities.

Y Combinator (2011–2019)

Following the sale of Loopt, Altman became increasingly involved with Y Combinator. In 2011, he began working with the accelerator as a part-time partner. His role expanded over the following years, and in 2014, Y Combinator co-founder Paul Graham selected Altman to succeed him as president of the organization.

As president of Y Combinator, Altman oversaw a significant expansion of the organization's activities and influence. Under his leadership, Y Combinator increased the size of its batches—the cohorts of startups admitted to the program each cycle—and broadened its focus to include a wider range of industries and company stages. Altman helped establish the YC Continuity Fund, a growth-stage investment vehicle that allowed Y Combinator to continue backing its most successful portfolio companies as they matured beyond the accelerator's traditional early-stage focus.

A lengthy profile published in The New Yorker in October 2016 described Altman as one of the most influential figures in Silicon Valley, detailing his role in shaping Y Combinator and his broader ambitions for technology's role in society. The article described his wide-ranging interests, including in areas such as universal basic income, nuclear energy, and the long-term risks and opportunities presented by artificial intelligence.

During his tenure at Y Combinator, Altman also became known for his personal blog, where he published essays on topics including startup strategy, management, and technology trends. His writing and public commentary helped establish him as a thought leader in the startup community and extended his influence beyond Y Combinator's direct portfolio.

A 2014 interview in Esquire magazine profiled Altman as a rising figure in technology, highlighting his rapid ascent from young entrepreneur to one of the most prominent gatekeepers in Silicon Valley's startup ecosystem. The article noted his involvement in discussions around preparedness for catastrophic events, a theme that would recur in subsequent profiles.

Altman served as president of Y Combinator until 2019, when he departed to focus full-time on leading OpenAI.

OpenAI (2015–present)

Founding and early involvement

OpenAI was founded in December 2015 as a nonprofit artificial intelligence research organization. Altman was one of the co-founders, alongside Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, Reid Hoffman, and others. The organization's stated mission was to ensure that artificial general intelligence (AGI) would benefit humanity as a whole. Altman's involvement in OpenAI from its inception reflected his long-standing interest in AI and its potential societal implications, themes he had explored during his time at Y Combinator.

In its early years, OpenAI operated as a research laboratory, publishing papers and releasing tools while recruiting top researchers in the field of machine learning and artificial intelligence. The organization attracted significant philanthropic funding and positioned itself as a counterweight to the concentration of AI capabilities within large technology corporations.

Transition to CEO

In 2019, Altman became CEO of OpenAI, coinciding with a significant structural change within the organization. OpenAI transitioned from a purely nonprofit entity to a "capped-profit" structure, creating a for-profit subsidiary—OpenAI LP—that could attract commercial investment while theoretically maintaining the nonprofit's oversight and mission orientation. This structural shift was driven in part by the enormous computational costs associated with training state-of-the-art AI models, which required financial resources beyond what philanthropic donations alone could sustain.

Under the capped-profit model, investors in OpenAI LP could receive returns up to a specified cap, after which additional profits would revert to the nonprofit parent. The arrangement attracted a major investment from Microsoft, which committed US$1 billion to OpenAI in 2019 and subsequently made additional multi-billion-dollar investments, establishing a deep commercial and technical partnership between the two organizations.

Launch of ChatGPT and the AI boom

The release of ChatGPT on November 30, 2022, marked a turning point for both OpenAI and the broader artificial intelligence industry. ChatGPT, based on OpenAI's GPT-3.5 large language model, was a conversational AI system that demonstrated a capacity for generating human-like text across a wide range of tasks, from answering questions and writing code to composing essays and creative fiction. The product attracted an estimated 100 million users within two months of its launch, making it one of the fastest-growing consumer technology products in history.

The success of ChatGPT propelled Altman into a level of public prominence unusual for a technology executive outside of the consumer electronics or social media sectors. He became a frequent interlocutor for policymakers, journalists, and industry leaders seeking to understand the implications of rapidly advancing AI capabilities. His public statements during this period combined enthusiasm for AI's potential benefits with acknowledgments of its risks, including to labor markets, information integrity, and societal stability.

The release of ChatGPT also triggered a wave of investment and competition across the technology industry, with major companies including Google, Meta, and Amazon accelerating their own AI development programs. This period has been described as the "AI boom," and Altman has been identified as one of its central figures.

Board crisis and reinstatement (November 2023)

On November 17, 2023, OpenAI's board of directors abruptly removed Altman from his position as CEO. In a public statement, the board cited a loss of "confidence in his ability to continue leading OpenAI" but did not initially provide specific details about the reasons for the decision. The announcement came as a surprise to much of OpenAI's staff, its investors, and the broader technology industry.

The removal triggered an immediate and intense backlash. A large majority of OpenAI's employees signed an open letter threatening to resign if Altman was not reinstated and if the board members who had voted for his removal did not step down. Microsoft, as OpenAI's largest investor and commercial partner, publicly expressed support for Altman. Reports at the time indicated that Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella offered Altman a position leading a new advanced AI research team at Microsoft, though Altman ultimately did not take that role.

After five days of intense negotiations, Altman was reinstated as CEO of OpenAI on November 22, 2023. As part of the resolution, the board of directors was restructured, with several of the members who had voted for Altman's removal departing and new members being appointed. The episode drew widespread attention and commentary about the governance challenges inherent in OpenAI's unusual nonprofit-over-for-profit structure, the concentration of power in AI organizations, and the tensions between safety-oriented and commercial imperatives in AI development.

Recent developments

As of early 2026, Altman continues to serve as CEO of OpenAI. He has remained a prominent public voice on the trajectory of artificial intelligence, making appearances at industry conferences, policy forums, and media events globally. In February 2026, Altman spoke at an event hosted by The Indian Express in New Delhi, where he discussed topics including the race toward artificial general intelligence, competition within the AI industry, and the potential impact of AI on employment. During the same India visit, he addressed students at IIT Delhi, stating his view that AI would "automate the whole economy" and advising students to remain current with AI tools and their applications.

In February 2026, Altman publicly commented on what he described as "AI-washing" by technology companies—the practice of attributing layoffs to the adoption of artificial intelligence when the actual reasons may be more complex or unrelated to AI implementation. He suggested that some companies were using AI as a convenient justification for workforce reductions.

Altman has also commented publicly on the energy requirements of large-scale AI systems. In remarks reported in February 2026, he compared the energy and resources required to train AI models to the resources consumed in human development, stating that "training a human takes 20 years of food," and arguing that discussions about AI's energy consumption should be considered in that broader context.

Clean energy investments

Outside of his role at OpenAI, Altman has pursued investments in clean energy technologies. He has served as chairman of Helion Energy, a company developing fusion power technology, and Oklo, a company focused on advanced nuclear fission reactors. Helion Energy has been working to develop a commercially viable fusion power plant, and Altman's personal investment in the company has been described as significant. Altman stepped down from his chairman positions at both Helion Energy and Oklo in April 2025.

His interest in energy has been linked to the growing power demands of AI data centers and to a broader personal conviction about the importance of abundant, clean energy for long-term economic and technological progress.

Personal Life

Altman is openly gay, a fact he has discussed in public interviews over the course of his career. He came out during high school in St. Louis. He has one child.

Altman has spoken publicly about interests beyond technology, including in survivalism and preparedness for catastrophic scenarios. A 2023 Business Insider profile noted his interest in topics including pandemics, societal collapse, and life extension technologies. In a 2016 New Yorker profile, Altman discussed having stockpiled supplies—including gold, guns, antibiotics, and batteries—in case of a catastrophic event, as well as an arrangement with a fellow Silicon Valley figure to travel to a designated safe location in the event of a pandemic.

Altman maintains a personal blog where he writes about technology, startups, and societal issues.

Recognition

Altman has been recognized by several publications and organizations for his influence in the technology sector. In 2025, Time magazine named him among the "Architects of AI" as part of its Person of the Year coverage, reflecting his central role in the development and commercialization of artificial intelligence technologies.

He has been a participant in the Bilderberg Meeting, attending the 2016 and 2022 gatherings of the annual invitation-only conference of political leaders, business executives, and intellectuals.

His estimated net worth, as reported by Forbes, is approximately US$2.1 billion, derived primarily from his personal investments in technology and energy companies rather than from a salary at OpenAI, which for many years operated as a nonprofit.

Legacy

Altman's career has spanned three distinct phases of Silicon Valley's evolution: the mobile application era of the late 2000s, the rise of startup accelerators and seed-stage venture capital in the 2010s, and the emergence of large-scale artificial intelligence in the 2020s. His trajectory from Y Combinator startup founder to Y Combinator president to CEO of one of the most closely watched AI organizations in the world has placed him at the center of debates about the development, governance, and societal impact of artificial intelligence.

The launch of ChatGPT under Altman's leadership at OpenAI is considered a pivotal moment in the commercialization of AI, comparable in cultural impact to the introduction of the iPhone or the World Wide Web in terms of bringing a previously specialized technology into mass public use. The product's success reshaped public discourse about AI and prompted governments around the world to accelerate regulatory efforts related to AI safety, intellectual property, and labor market impacts.

The November 2023 board crisis at OpenAI, and Altman's rapid reinstatement, highlighted the governance challenges facing organizations at the intersection of nonprofit mission-driven research and commercial technology development. The episode prompted broader discussions in the technology industry and among policymakers about how organizations developing potentially transformative AI systems should be structured and governed.

As of 2026, Altman remains one of the most prominent figures in the global conversation about artificial intelligence, its commercial applications, and its implications for the future of work, energy, and society.