Samuel Harris Altman (born April 22, 1985) is an American entrepreneur and investor best known as the chief executive officer of OpenAI since 2019 (he was briefly dismissed and reinstated in November 2023).

[3][4][5] He dropped out of Stanford University after two years and founded Loopt, a mobile social networking service, raising more than $30 million in venture capital.

[18] In March 2012, after Loopt failed to gain significant user traction, the company was acquired by the Green Dot Corporation for $43.4 million.

[24] In a 2014 blog post, Altman stated that the total valuation of YC companies had surpassed $65 billion, including Airbnb, Dropbox, Zenefits, and Stripe.

[29] In December 2015, Altman co-founded OpenAI, an artificial intelligence research organization, alongside notable figures such as Elon Musk, Jessica Livingston, and Peter Thiel.

[30][31] The organization was initially funded with $1 billion in commitments from its founders and other investors, including Microsoft and Amazon Web Services.

[32] In March 2019, YC announced Altman's transition from president to a less hands-on role as chairman of the board, allowing him to focus on OpenAI.

[35] In 2019, Altman co-founded the for-profit company Tools For Humanity,[36] which builds and distributes systems designed to scan people's eyes to provide authentication and verify proof of personhood to counter fraud.

[47] OpenAI was initially funded by Altman, Greg Brockman, Elon Musk, Jessica Livingston, Peter Thiel, Microsoft, Amazon Web Services, Infosys and YC Research.

[50] Altman testified before the United States Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology and the Law on May 16, 2023, about issues of AI oversight.

[51] After the success of ChatGPT, the company's chatbot application, Altman made a world tour in May 2023, during which he visited 22 countries and met multiple leaders and diplomats, including British prime minister Rishi Sunak, French president Emmanuel Macron, Spanish prime minister Pedro Sánchez, German chancellor Olaf Scholz, Indian prime minister Narendra Modi, South Korean president Yoon Suk-yeol and Israeli president Isaac Herzog.

[3] On Friday, November 17, 2023, OpenAI's board, composed of researcher Helen Toner, Quora CEO Adam D'Angelo, AI governance advocate Tasha McCauley, and most prominently in the firing, OpenAI co-founder and chief scientist Ilya Sutskever, announced that they had made the decision to remove Altman as CEO and Greg Brockman from the board, both of whom were co-founders.

[57] This included Ilya Sutskever, who had previously advocated for firing Altman, but now had apologized stating on Twitter, "I regret my participation in the board's actions."

She also alleged that two executives in OpenAI had reported to the board "psychological abuse" from Altman, and provided screenshots and documentation to support their claims.

[citation needed] In 2017, Altman received an honorary Doctor of Engineering degree from the University of Waterloo in Canada for supporting companies through its Velocity entrepreneurship program.

[88][89] Walter Isaacson opined that Altman had "Musk-like intensity" and that it had been instrumental in the founding of OpenAI in partnership with Elon Musk.

[90] In late February 2024 Musk sued OpenAI and Altman, alleging they broke the company’s founding agreement by giving priority to profit over benefit to humanity.

[3][9][95] He disclosed his sexuality at the age of 17[3] in high school,[9][95] where he spoke out after some students objected to a National Coming Out Day speaker.

[9] Altman married engineer Oliver Mulherin in January 2024,[96] at their estate in Hawaii;[97] the pair also live in San Francisco's Russian Hill neighborhood and often spend weekends in Napa, California.

[101] Sam Altman, along with his mother Connie and younger brothers Max and Jack, issued a joint statement on X denying the allegations, describing them as "utterly untrue".

[106] In 2019, Altman held a fundraiser at his home in San Francisco for 2020 Democratic presidential candidate and fellow tech entrepreneur Andrew Yang.

[107] In May 2020, Altman donated $250,000 to American Bridge 21st Century, a super PAC supporting Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden.