Sam Altman

Samuel Harris Altman is an American entrepreneur and investor who has been the chief executive officer (CEO) of the artificial intelligence company OpenAI since 2019.

• Sam Altman is the CEO of OpenAI and a prolific venture investor.
• In 2005, he dropped out of Stanford to found social mapping company Loopt, which sold in 2012 for $43 million; he used proceeds to seed his own venture fund.
• Around that time, Altman became a partner at startup accelerator Y Combinator, then served as YC's president from 2014 to 2019.
• That year, Altman left YC to become CEO of OpenAI, now worth some $500 billion, although he was briefly fired and rehired in 2023.
• He has no equity in OpenAI, and instead owes his wealth to his investments, including stakes in Stripe, Reddit and nuclear fusion firm Helion.