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Sam Altman

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Sam Altman
Altman in 2019
Born(1985-04-22)April 22, 1985
Chicago, Illinois, U.S.
EducationStanford University (dropped out)
OccupationEntrepreneur
Known forLoopt, Y Combinator, OpenAI
TitleCEO of OpenAI LP
WebsiteOfficial website Edit this at Wikidata

Samuel Harris Altman (/ˈɔːltmən/ AWLT-mən; born 1985) is an American entrepreneur, investor, and programmer. He was the co-founder of Loopt and is the current CEO of OpenAI as of 2019.[1] Additionally, he co-founded Worldcoin in 2020. Formerly, he served as the president of Y Combinator and briefly as the CEO of Reddit. He has further invested in nuclear energy, as well as numerous technology companies. Altman was named one of the 100 most influential people in the world by Time magazine in 2023.[2]

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 eight.[3] He was born into a Jewish family.[4] For high school, he attended John Burroughs School and he studied computer science at Stanford University until dropping out in 2005.[5]

Career

Loopt

In 2005, at age 19,[6] Altman co-founded and became CEO of Loopt,[7] a location-based social networking mobile application. After raising more than $30 million 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.[8][9]

Y Combinator

Altman began as a part-time partner at Y Combinator in 2011.[10] In February 2014, Altman was named president of Y Combinator by its co-founder, Paul Graham.[11][12] 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.[13] In September 2016, Altman announced that he would become president of YC Group, which included Y Combinator and other units.[14]

Altman said that he hoped to expand Y Combinator to fund 1,000 new companies per year. He also tried to expand the types of companies funded by YC, especially "hard technology" companies.[15]

In October 2015, Altman announced YC Continuity, a $700 million growth-stage equity fund that invests in YC companies.[16] Also in October 2015, Altman announced Y Combinator Research, a non-profit research lab, and donated $10 million to the group.[17] YC Research has thus far announced research on basic income, the future of computing, education, and building new cities.[18]

Altman was named one of the "Best Young Entrepreneurs in Technology" by Businessweek magazine in 2008,[19] and the top investor under 30 by Forbes magazine in 2015.[20] In 2017, Altman received an honorary Doctor of Engineering degree from the University of Waterloo for supporting companies from its Velocity entrepreneurship program.[21] That same year, GLAAD recognized Altman with the Ric Weiland Award for promoting LGBTQ equality and acceptance in the tech sector.[22]

In March 2019, YC announced Altman's transitioning into a Chairman position to focus more on OpenAI.[23] This decision came shortly after YC announced it would be moving its headquarters to San Francisco.[24] As of early 2020, he was no longer affiliated with YC.

Angel investing

Altman 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),[25][26] and Retro Biosciences.[27]

He was the CEO of Reddit for eight days in 2014 after CEO Yishan Wong resigned.[28] He announced the return of Steve Huffman as CEO on July 10, 2015.[29]

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.[30]

OpenAI

In 2019, Sam Altman left Y Combinator to focus full-time on OpenAI as CEO.[1] OpenAI was founded in 2015 and is a capped-profit research company whose stated goal is to advance artificial intelligence in a way that is most likely to benefit humanity as a whole, rather than cause harm.[31] The organization was initially funded by Altman, Greg Brockman, Elon Musk, Jessica Livingston, Peter Thiel, Microsoft, Amazon Web Services, Infosys, and YC Research. In total, when the company launched in 2015, it had raised $1 billion from outside funders.[32]

Worldcoin

Altman co-founded Worldcoin in 2020. Worldcoin aims to give its new digital money to every human on Earth for free by using privacy-preserving iris recognition to ensure that its users do not claim their free share more than once.[33] Worldcoin paused its work in multiple countries after local contractors departed or regulations made doing business impossible.[34]

Philanthropy

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Altman helped fund and create Project Covalence which aimed to help researchers rapidly launch clinical trials in partnership with TrialSpark, a clinical trial startup.[35] After the bank failure of Silicon Valley Bank in March 2023, Altman gave money to multiple startups.[36]

Politics

According to reporting by Recode, there was speculation that Altman would run for Governor of California in the 2018 election, which he did not enter. In 2018, Altman launched "The United Slate", a political movement focused on fixing housing and healthcare policy.[37]

In 2019, Altman held a fundraiser at his house in San Francisco for Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang.[38] In May 2020, Altman donated $250,000 to American Bridge 21st Century, a Super-PAC supporting Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden.[39]

Personal life

Altman has been vegetarian since childhood.[40]

Altman is gay and has been out since his teen years.[41] He dated his Loopt co-founder Nick Sivo for nine years before they broke up shortly after the company was acquired.[42] As of 2023, his partner is Oliver Mulherin, an Australian software engineer.[43]

References

  1. ^ a b De Vynck, Gerrit (April 9, 2023). "The man who unleashed AI on an unsuspecting Silicon Valley". The Washington Post. Retrieved April 13, 2023.
  2. ^ "Time 100". Time. April 13, 2023. Retrieved April 15, 2023.
  3. ^ 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.
  4. ^ Friend, Tad (October 3, 2016). "Sam Altman's Manifest Destiny". The New Yorker. Archived from the original on May 17, 2017. Retrieved May 17, 2017.
  5. ^ "People". Y Combinator. Archived from the original on June 25, 2014. Retrieved December 15, 2015.
  6. ^ Ankeny, Jason (April 25, 2015). "Meet Y Combinator's Bold Whiz Kid Boss". Entrepreneur. Archived from the original on December 22, 2015. Retrieved December 15, 2015.
  7. ^ "Executives". Loopt. Archived from the original on February 16, 2012. Retrieved December 15, 2015.
  8. ^ Vascellaro, Jessica E. (March 9, 2012). "Startup Loopt Lands with Green Dot". The Wall Street Journal. Archived from the original on March 13, 2012. Retrieved March 13, 2012.
  9. ^ "Sam Altman: Why customer love is all you need | Masters of Scale podcast". WaitWhat. Archived from the original on March 20, 2018. Retrieved March 20, 2018.
  10. ^ Clark, Kate (March 8, 2019). "Y Combinator president Sam Altman is stepping down amid a series of changes at the accelerator". TechCrunch. Retrieved March 18, 2019.
  11. ^ Loizos, Connie (November 6, 2015). "Garry Tan Says Goodbye to Y Combinator". TechCrunch. Retrieved March 18, 2019.
  12. ^ Graham, Paul (April 24, 2014). "Sam Altman for President". Y Combinator. Archived from the original on March 25, 2017. Retrieved December 15, 2015.
  13. ^ Altman, Sam (August 26, 2015). "YC Stats". Y Combinator. Archived from the original on December 18, 2015. Retrieved December 19, 2015.
  14. ^ Altman, Sam (September 13, 2016). "YC Changes". Y Combinator. Archived from the original on November 7, 2016. Retrieved November 7, 2016.
  15. ^ Chafkin, Max (April 16, 2015). "Y Combinator President Sam Altman is Dreaming Big". Fast Company. Archived from the original on July 22, 2015. Retrieved July 22, 2015.
  16. ^
    • "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.
  17. ^ "YC Research". Y Combinator. October 7, 2015. Archived from the original on February 15, 2016. Retrieved February 19, 2016.
  18. ^ "Y Combinator Research". YC Research. Archived from the original on June 11, 2016. Retrieved August 3, 2016.
  19. ^ "Tech's Best Young Entrepreneurs". Businessweek. April 18, 2008. Archived from the original on April 28, 2009. Retrieved April 19, 2009.
  20. ^ Wilson, Alexandra, ed. (January 5, 2015). "Forbes' 30 Under 30 2015: Venture Capital". Forbes. Archived from the original on February 20, 2015. Retrieved February 28, 2015.
  21. ^ "University of Waterloo to honour Silicon Valley leader Sam Altman". CBC News. June 2, 2017. Archived from the original on March 16, 2023. Retrieved March 22, 2023.
  22. ^ "House Dem. Leader Nancy Pelosi presents award to Sam Altman at 2017 GLAAD Gala SF". GLAAD. September 11, 2017. Archived from the original on March 22, 2023. Retrieved March 22, 2023.
  23. ^ Loizos, Connie (March 9, 2019). "Did Sam Altman make YC better or worse?". TechCrunch. Retrieved February 3, 2020.
  24. ^ Clark, Kate (March 8, 2019). "Y Combinator president Sam Altman is stepping down amid a series of changes at the accelerator". TechCrunch. Retrieved February 3, 2020.
  25. ^ Altman, Sam. "Angel List". AngelList. Archived from the original on May 9, 2015. Retrieved April 20, 2015.
  26. ^ Forrest, Conner (February 23, 2015). "How Notable PDF built an annotation tool for PDFs on the web". TechRepublic. Archived from the original on April 5, 2017. Retrieved March 26, 2018.
  27. ^ Regalado, Antonio (March 8, 2023). "Sam Altman invested $180 million into a company trying to delay death". MIT Technology Review. Archived from the original on March 19, 2023. Retrieved March 19, 2023.
  28. ^ "A New Team At Reddit". Sam Altman. November 13, 2014. Archived from the original on February 13, 2015. Retrieved February 13, 2015.
  29. ^ "An Old Team At Reddit". reddit. Archived from the original on December 26, 2015. Retrieved July 13, 2015.
  30. ^ Altman, Sam (June 29, 2015). "Energy". Sam Altman. Archived from the original on June 29, 2015. Retrieved July 13, 2015.
  31. ^ "Introducing OpenAI". OpenAI. December 12, 2015. Archived from the original on August 8, 2017. Retrieved December 15, 2015.
  32. ^ Olanoff, Drew (December 11, 2015). "Artificial Intelligence Nonprofit OpenAI Launches With Backing From Elon Musk And Sam Altman". TechCrunch. Archived from the original on October 20, 2022. Retrieved October 20, 2022.
  33. ^ Koffman, Tatiana (October 21, 2021). "Worldcoin Wants To Give Cryptocurrency To Every Human On Earth". Forbes. Archived from the original on September 8, 2022. Retrieved September 8, 2022.
  34. ^ Huet, Ellen (March 16, 2022). "Crypto Startup That Wants to Scan Everyone's Eyeballs Is Having Some Trouble". Bloomberg News. Archived from the original on March 16, 2022. Retrieved March 16, 2022.
  35. ^ Herper, Matthew (June 16, 2020). "Teaming tech and pharma, effort seeks to speed Covid-19 clinical trials". Stat. Archived from the original on October 18, 2020. Retrieved October 17, 2020.
  36. ^ Krystal, Hu; Tong, Anna; Jeffrey, Dastin (March 12, 2023). "Tech execs race to save startups from 'extinction' after SVB collapse". Reuters. Archived from the original on March 12, 2023. Retrieved March 12, 2023.
  37. ^ Romm, Tony (July 31, 2017). "Sam Altman will spend big on a new political movement to fix U.S. housing, health care and more". Vox. Archived from the original on January 19, 2023. Retrieved January 19, 2023.
  38. ^ Russell, Melia (November 14, 2019). "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 July 2, 2020. Retrieved June 30, 2020.
  39. ^ Tindera, Michela. "Silicon Valley's Sam Altman Gave $250,000 To Democratic Super-PAC Supporting Biden". Forbes. Archived from the original on July 3, 2020. Retrieved June 30, 2020.
  40. ^ "Fireside Chat with Sam Altman". Rescale. February 24, 2020. Archived from the original on August 3, 2022. Retrieved August 3, 2022.
  41. ^ Tech Pride: Sam Altman. February 8, 2019. Archived from the original on February 3, 2023. Retrieved January 21, 2023.
  42. ^ Friend, Tad (October 3, 2016). "Sam Altman's Manifest Destiny". The New Yorker. Archived from the original on May 17, 2017. Retrieved February 18, 2020.
  43. ^ "The ChatGPT King Isn't Worried, but He Knows You Might Be". The New York Times.
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