Sam Altman

Samuel H. "Sam" Altman (/ˈɔːltmən/; born April 22, 1985) is an American entrepreneur, investor, programmer, and blogger.[1] He is the CEO of OpenAI and the former president of Y Combinator.[2][3]

Sam Altman
Altman in 2019
Born
Samuel H. Altman

(1985-04-22) April 22, 1985
Chicago, Illinois, US
NationalityAmerican
CitizenshipUnited States
Alma materStanford University (dropped out)
OccupationEntrepreneur
Known forLoopt, Y Combinator, OpenAI
TitleCEO of OpenAI LP and former president of Y Combinator
Websiteblog.samaltman.com

Early life and education

Altman grew up in St. Louis, Missouri; his mother is a dermatologist. He received his first computer at the age of 8.[4] He was raised Jewish.[5] He attended John Burroughs School for high school and studied computer science at Stanford University until dropping out in 2005.[6] While studying at Stanford, he worked in the AI Lab.[7] In 2017, he received an honorary degree from the University of Waterloo.[8]

Career

Loopt

In 2005, at age 19,[9] Altman co-founded and became CEO of Loopt,[10] a location-based social networking mobile application. After raising more than $30M in venture capital, Loopt was shut down in 2012 after failing to get traction. It was acquired by the Green Dot Corporation for $43.4 million.[11][12]

Y Combinator

Altman began as a part-time partner at Y Combinator in 2011.[7][13] In February 2014, Altman was named president of Y Combinator by its cofounder Paul Graham.[14][15] His first batch of investments included Loopt. In a 2014 blog post, Altman said that the total valuation of Y Combinator companies had surpassed $65 billion, including well-known companies like Airbnb, Dropbox, Zenefits and Stripe.[16] In September 2016, Altman announced that he would become president of YC Group, which includes Y Combinator and other units.[17]

Altman has said that he hopes to expand Y Combinator to fund 1,000 new companies per year. He has also tried to expand the types of companies funded by YC, especially 'hard technology' companies.[18]

In October 2015, Altman announced YC Continuity, a $700 million growth-stage equity fund that invests in YC companies.[19] Also in October 2015, Altman announced Y Combinator Research, a non-profit research lab, and donated $10 million to the group.[20] YC Research has thus far announced research on basic income, the future of computing, education, and building new cities.[21]

Altman was named the top investor under 30 by Forbes in 2015,[22] one of the "Best Young Entrepreneurs in Technology" by BusinessWeek in 2008[23] and listed as one of the five most interesting startup founders between 1979 and 2009 by his colleague Paul Graham.[24]

In March 2019, YC announced Altman's transitioning into a Chairman position to focus more on OpenAI.[25] This decision came shortly after YC announced it will be moving its headquarters to San Francisco.[26] Today, he is no longer affiliated with YC.

Angel investing

He is an investor in many companies, including Airbnb, Stripe, Reddit, Asana, Pinterest, Teespring, Zenefits, FarmLogs, True North, Shoptiques, Instacart, Optimizely, Verbling, Soylent, Reserve, Vicarious, Clever, Notable PDF (now Kami)[27][28] and Change.org.[29]

He was the CEO of Reddit for eight days in 2014 after CEO Yishan Wong resigned.[30] He announced the return of Steve Huffman as CEO on July 10, 2015.[31]

Nuclear energy

He is chairman of the board for Helion and Oklo, two nuclear energy companies. He has said that nuclear energy is one of the most important areas of technological development.[32]

OpenAI

Altman is the CEO of OpenAI. OpenAI is a for profit research company whose goal is to advance digital intelligence in a way that is most likely to benefit humanity as a whole, rather than cause harm.[33]

Philanthropy

During the COVID-19 pandemic Altman helped fund and create Project Covalence which helps researchers rapidly launch clinical trials in partnership with TrialSpark a clinical trial startup.[34][35]

Politics

In 2019 Altman held a fundraiser at his house in San Francisco for Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang. [36]

In May 2020 Altman donated $250k to American Bridge 21st century, a Super-PAC supporting Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden. [37][38]

References
  1. "Sam Altman". SamAltman.com. Archived from the original on December 11, 2015. Retrieved December 15, 2015.
  2. Graham, Paul (April 24, 2014). "Sam Altman for President". Y Combinator. Archived from the original on March 25, 2017. Retrieved March 20, 2017.
  3. "OpenAI". Archived from the original on August 8, 2017. Retrieved March 20, 2017.
  4. Junod, Tom (December 18, 2014). "How Venture Capitalists Find Opportunities in the Future". Esquire. Archived from the original on December 20, 2015. Retrieved December 15, 2015.
  5. "Sam Altman's Manifest Destiny". NewYorker.com. The New Yorker. Archived from the original on 17 May 2017. Retrieved 17 May 2017.
  6. "People". Y Combinator. Archived from the original on June 25, 2014. Retrieved December 15, 2015.
  7. "Sam Altman - President, YC Group @ Y Combinator | Crunchbase". Crunchbase. Archived from the original on 2018-02-20. Retrieved 2018-02-20.
  8. "Spring 2017 honorary and award recipients". Registrar's Office. University of Waterloo. Archived from the original on December 1, 2017. Retrieved July 7, 2017.
  9. Ankeny, Jason (April 25, 2015). "Meet Y Combinator's Bold Whiz Kid Boss". Archived from the original on December 22, 2015. Retrieved December 15, 2015.
  10. "Executives". Loopt. Archived from the original on February 16, 2012. Retrieved December 15, 2015.
  11. "Startup Loopt Lands with Green Dot". Wall Street Journal. March 9, 2012. Archived from the original on March 13, 2012. Retrieved March 13, 2012.
  12. "Sam Altman: Why customer love is all you need | Masters of Scale podcast". WaitWhat. Archived from the original on 2018-03-20. Retrieved 2018-03-20.
  13. "Y Combinator president Sam Altman is stepping down amid a series of changes at the accelerator". TechCrunch. Retrieved 2019-03-18.
  14. "Garry Tan Says Goodbye to Y Combinator". TechCrunch. Retrieved 2019-03-18.
  15. Graham, Paul (April 24, 2014). "Sam Altman for President". Y Combinator. Archived from the original on March 25, 2017. Retrieved December 15, 2015.
  16. "YC Stats". Y Combinator. August 26, 2015. Archived from the original on December 18, 2015. Retrieved December 19, 2015.
  17. Altman, Sam. "YC Changes". Y Combinator. Archived from the original on November 7, 2016. Retrieved November 7, 2016.
  18. "Y Combinator President Sam Altman is Dreaming Big". Fast Company. April 16, 2015. Archived from the original on July 22, 2015. Retrieved July 22, 2015.
  19. "YC Continuity". Y Combinator. October 15, 2015. Archived from the original on December 18, 2015. Retrieved December 19, 2015.
    - "YC Continuity". VentureBeat. October 15, 2015. Archived from the original on December 22, 2015. Retrieved December 19, 2015.
  20. "YC Research". Y Combinator. October 7, 2015. Archived from the original on February 15, 2016. Retrieved February 19, 2016.
  21. "Y Combinator Research". YC Research. Archived from the original on 11 June 2016. Retrieved 3 August 2016.
  22. "Forbes' 30 Under 30 2015: Venture Capital". Forbes. January 5, 2015. Archived from the original on February 20, 2015. Retrieved February 28, 2015.
  23. "Tech's Best Young Entrepreneurs". BusinessWeek. April 18, 2008. Archived from the original on April 28, 2009. Retrieved April 19, 2009.
  24. Graham, Paul (April 2009). "Five Founders". Archived from the original on April 17, 2009. Retrieved April 19, 2009.
  25. Loizos, Connie (2019-03-09). "Did Sam Altman make YC better or worse?". TechCrunch. Retrieved 2020-02-03.
  26. "Y Combinator president Sam Altman is stepping down amid a series of changes at the accelerator". TechCrunch. Retrieved 2020-02-03.
  27. Altman, Sam. "Angel List". Angel List. Archived from the original on May 9, 2015. Retrieved April 20, 2015.
  28. "How Notable PDF built an annotation tool for PDFs on the web". 2017-04-05. Archived from the original on 2017-04-05. Retrieved 2018-03-26.
  29. "Change.org - Investors | CrunchBase". CrunchBase. Archived from the original on 19 September 2016. Retrieved 3 August 2016.
  30. "A New Team At Reddit". Sam Altman. November 13, 2014. Archived from the original on February 13, 2015. Retrieved February 13, 2015.
  31. "An Old Team At Reddit". reddit. Archived from the original on December 26, 2015. Retrieved July 13, 2015.
  32. "Energy". Sam Altman. Archived from the original on June 29, 2015. Retrieved July 13, 2015.
  33. "OpenAI". Archived from the original on August 8, 2017. Retrieved December 15, 2015.
  34. "Teaming tech and pharma, effort seeks to speed Covid-19 clinical trials". STAT. 2020-06-16. Archived from the original on 2020-10-18. Retrieved 2020-10-17.
  35. "Project Covalence". Sam Altman. Archived from the original on 2020-10-22. Retrieved 2020-10-17.
  36. Russell, Melia. "Andrew Yang preached his tech-friendly gospel at Sam Altman's San Francisco house: You can't treat tech like oil companies and breaking up Amazon won't bring malls back". Business Insider. Archived from the original on 2020-07-02. Retrieved 2020-06-30.
  37. Tindera, Michela. "Silicon Valley's Sam Altman Gave $250,000 To Democratic Super-PAC Supporting Biden". Forbes. Archived from the original on 2020-07-03. Retrieved 2020-06-30.
  38. "FEC Filings" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on 2020-06-09.
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