Sam Altman
Samuel H. "Sam" Altman (/ˈɔːltmən/; born April 22, 1985) is an American entrepreneur, investor, programmer, and blogger.[1] He is the former president of Y Combinator and now the CEO of OpenAI.[2][3]
Sam Altman | |
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![]() Altman in 2019 | |
Born | Samuel H. Altman April 22, 1985 |
Nationality | American |
Citizenship | United States |
Alma mater | Stanford University (dropped out) |
Occupation | Entrepreneur |
Known for | Loopt, Y Combinator, OpenAI |
Title | CEO of OpenAI LP and former president of Y Combinator |
Website | blog![]() |
Early life and education
Altman grew up in St. Louis, Missouri; his mother was a dermatologist. He received his first computer at the age of 8.[4] He was raised Jewish.[5] He attended John Burroughs School for high school and studied computer science at Stanford University until dropping out in 2005.[6] While studying at Stanford, he worked in the AI Lab.[7] In 2017, he received an honorary degree from the University of Waterloo.[8]
Career
Loopt
In 2005, at age 19,[10] Altman co-founded and became CEO of Loopt,[11] a location-based social networking mobile application. After raising more than $30M 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.[12][13]
Y Combinator
Altman began as a part-time partner at Y Combinator in 2011.[7][14] In February 2014, Altman was named president of Y Combinator by its cofounder Paul Graham.[15][16] His first batch of investments included Loopt. 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.[17] In September 2016, Altman announced that he would become president of YC Group, which includes Y Combinator and other units.[18]
Altman has said that he hopes to expand Y Combinator to fund 1,000 new companies per year. He has also tried to expand the types of companies funded by YC, especially 'hard technology' companies.[19]
In October 2015, Altman announced YC Continuity, a $700 million growth-stage equity fund that invests in YC companies.[20] Also in October 2015, Altman announced Y Combinator Research, a non-profit research lab, and donated $10 million to the group.[21] YC Research has thus far announced research on basic income, the future of computing, education, and building new cities.[22]
Altman was named the top investor under 30 by Forbes in 2015,[23] one of the "Best Young Entrepreneurs in Technology" by BusinessWeek in 2008[24] and listed as one of the five most interesting startup founders between 1979 and 2009 by his colleague Paul Graham.[25]
In March 2019, YC announced Altman's transitioning into a Chairman position to focus more on OpenAI.[26] This decision came shortly after YC announced it will be moving its headquarters to San Francisco.[27] Today, he is no longer affiliated with YC.
Angel investing
He is a personal investor in many companies, including Airbnb, Stripe, Reddit, Asana, Pinterest, Teespring, Zenefits, FarmLogs, Shoptiques, Instacart, Optimizely, Verbling, Soylent, Reserve, Vicarious, Clever, Notable PDF (now Kami)[28][29] and Change.org.[30]
He was the CEO of Reddit for eight days in 2014 after CEO Yishan Wong resigned.[31] As part of his investment, he developed a new way for the community to own part of the company. He announced the return of Steve Huffman as CEO on July 10, 2015.[32]
Politics
In 2019 Altman held a fundraiser at his house in San Francisco for Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang. [35][36][37]
In May of 2020 Altman donated $250k to American Bridge 21st century, a Super-PAC supporting Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden. [38][39]
References
- "Sam Altman". SamAltman.com. Retrieved December 15, 2015.
- Graham, Paul (April 24, 2014). "Sam Altman for President". Y Combinator. Retrieved March 20, 2017.
- "OpenAI". Retrieved March 20, 2017.
- Junod, Tom (December 18, 2014). "How Venture Capitalists Find Opportunities in the Future". Esquire. Retrieved December 15, 2015.
- "Sam Altman's Manifest Destiny". NewYorker.com. The New Yorker. Retrieved 17 May 2017.
- "People". Y Combinator. Retrieved December 15, 2015.
- "Sam Altman - President, YC Group @ Y Combinator | Crunchbase". Crunchbase. Retrieved 2018-02-20.
- "Spring 2017 honorary and award recipients". Registrar's Office. University of Waterloo. Retrieved July 7, 2017.
- Lendup (April 11, 2017). "On AI, the Future of America, and Being Gay in Tech: Q&A with Sam Altman". Archived from the original on 2020-06-30. Retrieved 2020-06-30.
- Ankeny, Jason (April 25, 2015). "Meet Y Combinator's Bold Whiz Kid Boss". Retrieved December 15, 2015.
- "Executives". Loopt. Archived from the original on February 16, 2012. Retrieved December 15, 2015.
- "Startup Loopt Lands with Green Dot". Wall Street Journal. March 9, 2012. Retrieved March 13, 2012.
- "Sam Altman: Why customer love is all you need | Masters of Scale podcast". WaitWhat. Retrieved 2018-03-20.
- "Y Combinator president Sam Altman is stepping down amid a series of changes at the accelerator". TechCrunch. Retrieved 2019-03-18.
- "Garry Tan Says Goodbye to Y Combinator". TechCrunch. Retrieved 2019-03-18.
- Graham, Paul (April 24, 2014). "Sam Altman for President". Y Combinator. Retrieved December 15, 2015.
- "YC Stats". Y Combinator. August 26, 2015. Retrieved December 19, 2015.
- Altman, Sam. "YC Changes". Y Combinator. Retrieved November 7, 2016.
- "Y Combinator President Sam Altman is Dreaming Big". Fast Company. April 16, 2015. Retrieved July 22, 2015.
- "YC Continuity". Y Combinator. October 15, 2015. Retrieved December 19, 2015.
- "YC Continuity". VentureBeat. October 15, 2015. Retrieved December 19, 2015. - "YC Research". Y Combinator. October 7, 2015. Retrieved February 19, 2016.
- "Y Combinator Research". YC Research. Retrieved 3 August 2016.
- "Forbes' 30 Under 30 2015: Venture Capital". Forbes. January 5, 2015. Retrieved February 28, 2015.
- "Tech's Best Young Entrepreneurs". BusinessWeek. April 18, 2008. Retrieved April 19, 2009.
- Graham, Paul (April 2009). "Five Founders". Retrieved April 19, 2009.
- Loizos, Connie (2019-03-09). "Did Sam Altman make YC better or worse?". TechCrunch. Retrieved 2020-02-03.
- "Y Combinator president Sam Altman is stepping down amid a series of changes at the accelerator". TechCrunch. Retrieved 2020-02-03.
- Altman, Sam. "Angel List". Angel List. Retrieved April 20, 2015.
- "How Notable PDF built an annotation tool for PDFs on the web". 2017-04-05. Archived from the original on 2017-04-05. Retrieved 2018-03-26.
- "Change.org - Investors | CrunchBase". CrunchBase. Retrieved 3 August 2016.
- "A New Team At Reddit". Sam Altman. November 13, 2014. Retrieved February 13, 2015.
- "An Old Team At Reddit". reddit. Retrieved July 13, 2015.
- "Energy". Sam Altman. Retrieved July 13, 2015.
- "OpenAI". Retrieved December 15, 2015.
- Beberg, Anitha (November 14, 2019). "Fireside Chat with Andrew Yang and Sam Altman".
- Beberg, Anitha (November 14, 2020). "Fireside Chat with Andrew Yang and Sam Altman".
- Russell, Melia. "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. Retrieved 2020-06-30.
- Tindera, Michela. "Silicon Valley's Sam Altman Gave $250,000 To Democratic Super-PAC Supporting Biden". Forbes. Retrieved 2020-06-30.
- "FEC Filings" (PDF).
External links
- Altman's blog (2010 to date)
- Startup Playbook (2016)
- Sam Altman’s Manifest Destiny. "Is the head of Y Combinator fixing the world, or trying to take over Silicon Valley?" By Tad Friend (October 2016), The New Yorker
- Inc.: Top 30 Entrepreneurs Under 30 - Sam Altman, Loopt (2007)
- Sam Altman - Founder of Loopt (the unofficial Stanford blog) (2007)