Sam Altman

Samuel Harris Altman was born in Chicago and grew up primarily in the St. Louis area. He developed an interest in computing at an early age. At eight, he received an Apple Macintosh, learned to program, and began taking apart and examining computer hardware.

Altman attended John Burroughs School in St. Louis before studying computer science at Stanford University. He left Stanford after two years in 2005, at age 19, to pursue a technology business. During high school, he publicly came out as gay at a school assembly and encouraged the school to support gay students.

In 2005, Altman co-founded Loopt, a location-based social networking application that allowed users to share their locations with friends. He served as the company's CEO and raised venture capital from investors including New Enterprise Associates, Sequoia Capital, and Y Combinator. Loopt was acquired by Green Dot Corporation in 2012 after failing to attract a large user base.

Altman joined Y Combinator as a part-time partner in 2011 and became its president in 2014, succeeding co-founder Paul Graham, who had been his mentor. Under Altman, the accelerator expanded its focus and supported companies including Airbnb, DoorDash, Instacart, Reddit, and Twitch. Altman left the presidency in 2019 to focus full-time on OpenAI.

After the sale of Loopt, Altman co-founded Hydrazine Capital with his brother Jack Altman. The firm invested in technology startups, including companies associated with Y Combinator. Altman also became an angel investor in businesses such as Reddit, Airbnb, Stripe, Cruise, Helion Energy, and Retro Biosciences.

His investment interests have extended beyond software. He has backed biotechnology, self-driving vehicles, fusion energy, solar energy, and nuclear energy companies. He also co-founded Tools for Humanity, the company associated with Worldcoin, a project using iris-scanning systems to create a digital proof of personhood.

Altman co-founded OpenAI in 2015 as a nonprofit artificial intelligence research organization with Elon Musk and other technology and investment figures. The organization said its mission was to develop advanced artificial intelligence for the benefit of humanity. Altman and Musk served as co-chairs during OpenAI's early period.

In 2018, Musk left OpenAI after disagreements over its direction and governance. OpenAI later created a for-profit arm to help finance its research and entered a major partnership with Microsoft, which invested in the company, supplied cloud computing through Azure, and integrated OpenAI technology into its products. Altman became OpenAI's CEO in 2019.

OpenAI's work under Altman included large language models and generative AI products such as DALL-E and ChatGPT. ChatGPT was released publicly in November 2022 and attracted more than one million sign-ups within five days. Its rapid adoption brought artificial intelligence and the possibility of artificial general intelligence to broad public attention.

Altman has argued that artificial general intelligence could eventually match or exceed human capabilities across a wide range of tasks. He has also spoken about AI safety, regulation, and the need to manage the risks associated with increasingly powerful systems. In 2023, he testified before a United States Senate subcommittee about artificial intelligence oversight and regulation.

On November 17, 2023, OpenAI's board removed Altman as CEO, stating that he had not been consistently candid in communications with the board. The decision triggered a leadership crisis and an employee revolt. More than 500 employees signed a letter threatening to leave unless the board resigned and Altman returned.

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella initially announced that Altman and Greg Brockman would join Microsoft to lead an advanced AI research team. Within five days, OpenAI reached an agreement for Altman to return as CEO, while most of the previous board members departed and a new board was formed. Altman remained in the role as OpenAI continued expanding its products and partnerships.

Altman married Australian software engineer Oliver Mulherin in January 2024. The couple had a son through surrogacy in February 2025. Altman has described becoming a parent as a deeply significant experience.

Altman has been vegetarian since childhood and has spoken publicly about his experiences as a gay man. He and Mulherin signed the Giving Pledge in 2024, committing to give away most of their wealth. Altman has also advocated universal basic income and later proposed the idea of universal basic compute, giving people access to a share of advanced AI computing capacity.