Samuel Harris Altman was born into a Jewish family on April 22, 1985 and he grew up in St. Louis, Missouri, US. He received his first PC at the age of eight.
After spending a year at Stanford University to study computer science, Altman decided to drop out and pursue other endeavours in 2005.
A 19-year-old Altman co-founded location-based social media app Loopt, which failed to find its footing and was eventually purchased by Green Dot Corporation for $43.4 million in 2012.
In 2011, Altman joined as a part-time partner at tech startup accelerator Y Combinator. In 2014, he was named the president of Y Combinator. He became the president of YC group in 2016.
In 2019, Altman decided to focus on AI research lab OpenAI, and hence stepped down from YC Group presidency.
In 2020, Altman made the move to fully focus on OpenAI as a CEO and co-founder, which already saw fundings from tech giants such as Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, Microsoft, Amazon Web Services, and others.
Altman was also the CEO of Reddit for a brief eight days in 2014, holding the fort after Yishan Wong stepped down and Steve Huffman returned as CEO.
In 2019, he co-founded Tools for Humanity, which built a cryptocurrency-based global iris-based biometric system, called Worldcoin.
Altman was named one of the 100 most influential people by Time magazine this year.
There are no details on Sam Altman’s net worth on any recognised platform, including Bloomberg and Forbes.
He dated Loopt co-founder Nick Sivo in the past. Currently, he is in a relationship with Australian software engineer Oliver Mulherin.