Sam Altman is CEO of OpenAI, the buzzy AI firm he co-founded with Elon Musk. We know OpenAI from ChatGPT, which has blown AI coins in the crypto market. We take a look at how Altman got his start and became the head of one of today’s most watched companies.
A glimpse of the past of the inventor of ChatGPT, who flew AI coins
Sam Altman, 37, was born in St. Louis, Missouri. At the age of 8 he learned to program and disassemble a Macintosh computer. He attended the John Burroughs School, a private, non-denominational college preparatory school in St. Altman studied computer science for two years at Stanford University, and then two of his classmates left to work full-time on Loopt, their mobile app that shares a user’s location with friends.
Loopt was part of the first group of eight companies in startup accelerator Y Combinator. Each startup received $6,000 per founder, and Loopt was in the same group as Reddit. Loopt eventually reached a valuation of $175 million, but it didn’t get enough attention. That’s why the founders sold it for $43 million in 2012. Its sale price of $43 million was close to the amount it collected from investors. The company was acquired by Green Dot, a banking company known for prepaid cards.
After Loopt, Altman started a venture fund called Hydrazine Capital and raised $21 million. This included much of the $5 million he received from Loopt and an investment from billionaire entrepreneur and venture capitalist Peter Thiel. Altman invested 75% of that money in YC companies and led Reddit’s Series B fundraising round.
“Under Sam’s management, YC’s level of ambition increased 10 times!”
In 2014, 28-year-old Altman was chosen by Y Combinator founder Paul Graham to replace him as president of the startup accelerator. When Altman was president of YC, he gave a lecture series called ‘How to Start a Startup’ at Stanford in the fall of 2014. In 2015, Altman was listed on the Forbes 30 Under 30 for venture capital at the age of 29.
After becoming YC president, he wanted to allow more science and engineering initiatives to enter each party. He chose a fission and fusion venture for YC because he wanted to start his own nuclear power company. He invested his own money in both companies and served on the boards of directors. “Under Sam’s direction, YC’s level of ambition has increased by a factor of 10,” says Mark Andreessen, co-founder of venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz.
Inventor of ChatGPT: I’m getting ready to survive!
Sam Altman once told two YC founders that he loves race cars and has five cars, two of which are McLaren and an old Tesla. He also said that he likes to charter planes and fly them all over California.
“I’m getting ready to survive,” Altman told the founders of the Shypmate initiative, warning of either “a deadly synthetic virus, artificial intelligence attacking humans, or nuclear war.” That’s why Altman told the founders in 2016, “I try not to think about it too much. But I have weapons, gold, potassium iodide, antibiotics, batteries, water, gas masks and a large piece of land from the Israel Defense Forces. I could fly to Big Sur,” he said.
He co-founded OpenAI with Elon Musk
Altman’s mother is a dermatologist. Altman has a brother named Jack, who is the co-founder and CEO of Lattice, an employee management platform. Along with his brothers Max, Altman started a fund called Apollo in 2020 focused on financing ‘moonshot’ companies.
As you follow on Kriptokoin.com, in 2015, Altman co-founded OpenAI with Elon Musk, who was then the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX. For the not-for-profit AI company, their goal was to make sure AI didn’t destroy humans. “We can sit on the sidelines or promote regulatory oversight or join in with the right structure with people who deeply care about developing AI in a safe and beneficial way for humanity,” Elon Musk said in 2015.
Some of Silicon Valley’s most prominent names have committed $1 billion to OpenAI, including LinkedIn co-founders Reid Hoffman and Peter Thiel, along with Altman and Musk.
Resigned to focus on OpenAI, which is driving AI coins!
Tweeting that he voted against Donald Trump after the 2016 election, Altman said he decided to talk to 100 Trump supporters in the US to see what they did and didn’t like about the president. He also wanted to know ‘what would persuade them not to vote for him in the future’. “He voted against Trump because I believe the principles he stands for pose an unacceptable threat to America,” Altman said in a thread on Twitter.
Altman stepped down as YC president in March 2019 to focus on OpenAI. He remained in the role of chairman on the accelerator. At a StrictlyVC event in 2019, Altman was asked how OpenAI plans to make a profit, and Altman replied that ‘the honest answer is: we have no idea’.
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