Sam Altman

About Sam Altman

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 $80 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.