on Samuel Harris Altman, popularly known as Sam Altman, was born on April 22, 1985. He is an American entrepreneur, investor, and programmer who is the current CEO of OpenAI, a research and deployment company that aims to create artificial intelligence that can benefit humanity without causing harm or being influenced by human biases. He is also a co-founder of Loopt, a location-based social networking app that was acquired by Green Dot Corporation in 2012. He was the president of Y Combinator, a startup accelerator that has funded and mentored hundreds of successful companies, such as Airbnb, Dropbox, Stripe, and Reddit, from 2014 to 2019. He is known for his vision, leadership, and innovation in the tech industry.
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Sam Altman Biography
| Full Name | Samuel Harris Altman |
|---|---|
| Date of Birth | April 22, 1985 |
| Place of Birth | Chicago, Illinois |
| Occupation | Programmer | Entrepreneur | Investor |
| Net Worth | $400 million |
| Social Media Handles |
|
Early Life and Education
Sam Altman was born on April 22, 1985, in Chicago, Illinois, into a Jewish family. He grew up in St. Louis, Missouri, where he attended John Burroughs School, a private school. He developed a passion for technology at a young age, influenced by his childhood idol, Steve Jobs. Sam Altman received his first computer, an Apple Macintosh when he was eight years old. He wrote poetry and freestyle raps from elementary school to high school. He enrolled at Stanford University in 2004, majoring in computer science, but dropped out after one year to pursue his entrepreneurial dreams.
Career
Sam Altman co-founded Loopt in 2005, when he was 19 years old, with the seed funding he received from being part of the first batch of Y Combinator. Loopt was a location-based social networking app that allowed users to share their location and discover nearby friends, events, and deals. Loopt was one of the first apps to use the GPS feature of smartphones. In 2012, Loopt was acquired by Green Dot Corporation, a prepaid debit card company, for $43.4 million.
In 2012, Sam Altman also co-founded Hydrazine Capital, a venture capital firm, with his brother, Jack Altman. Hydrazine Capital invested in various sectors, such as life sciences, education, specialty foods, marketplaces, big data, healthcare, consumer networks, enterprise software, and internet-connected hardware.
Sam Altman joined Y Combinator as a part-time partner in 2011, and became the president of the startup accelerator in 2014, succeeding its co-founder, Paul Graham. He expanded the scope and scale of Y Combinator, funding more than 1,000 startups per year, including “hard technology” companies, such as biotechnology, aerospace, and robotics. Also, he launched new initiatives, such as YC Continuity, a fund that invests in later-stage YC companies, and YC Research, a non-profit research lab that explores topics such as basic income, the future of computing, education, and building new cities. He stepped down as the president of Y Combinator in 2019, and became the chairman of the board, before leaving the company entirely in 2020.
Sam Altman co-founded OpenAI in 2015, with a group of prominent tech entrepreneurs and investors, such as Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, Reid Hoffman, and Marc Benioff. OpenAI is a research and deployment company that aims to create artificial intelligence that can benefit humanity without causing harm or being influenced by human biases. OpenAI is known for its groundbreaking projects, such as GPT-3, a natural language processing system that can generate coherent and diverse texts on various topics, and DALL-E, a computer vision system that can create images from text descriptions. Sam Altman became the CEO of OpenAI in 2019 and has been leading the company’s vision and strategy ever since.
Personal Life
Sam Altman is very private about his personal life and does not reveal much about his relationships. He is a fan of anime and cartoons and often references them in his tweets and interviews. Sam is also interested in philosophy, psychology, and spirituality. He is a Christian and has a tattoo of a cross on his left arm. Also, he has experimented with psychedelic drugs, such as LSD and psilocybin, to enhance his creativity and insight.
Awards and Achievements
Sam Altman has received several awards and recognition for his achievements and contributions to the tech industry. Some of them are:
- Time 100, a list of the most influential people in the world, in 2015.
- Fortune 40 Under 40, a list of the most influential young people in business, in 2015 and 2016.
- MIT Technology Review Innovators Under 35, a list of the most remarkable innovators who are transforming the world, in 2015.
- Vanity Fair New Establishment List, a list of the most powerful and influential people in the tech and media industries, in 2015 and 2016.
- Wired 25, a list of the people who are shaping the future of technology, culture, and business, in 2018.
Net Worth
Sam Altman has an estimated net worth of $400 million as of 2023. He earns money from his investments, salary, and equity in various tech companies. He has invested in several high-profile tech companies, such as Asana, Airbnb, Pinterest, Stripe, ZenPayroll, Instacart, Coinbase, and many more. Sam Altman has also donated millions of dollars to various causes, such as basic income, effective altruism, and COVID-19 relief.
Social Media Handles
Sam Altman is active on various social media platforms, where he shares his thoughts and opinions on technology, entrepreneurship, and society. His social media handles are:
- Twitter: @sama
- Medium: @sama
- LinkedIn: Sam Altman
- Website: blog.samaltman.com
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