Sam Altman

Sam Altman is the CEO of Open AI.

In 2005, at the age of 19, Altman co-founded Loopt, a location-based social networking mobile application. As CEO, Altman raised more than $30 million in venture capital for the company, including an initial investment of $5 million from Patrick Chung of Xfund and his team at NEA, which was later followed by investments from Sequoia Capital and Y Combinator. In March 2012, after Loopt failed to gain traction with enough users, the company was acquired by the Green Dot Corporation for $43.4 million. The following month, Altman co-founded Hydrazine Capital with his brother, Jack Altman, which is still in operation.

Altman became a partner at Y Combinator, a startup accelerator that invests in a wide range of startups, in 2011, initially working there on a part-time basis. In February 2014, Altman was named president of Y Combinator by co-founder Paul Graham. In a 2014 blog post, Altman said that the total valuation of Y Combinator companies had surpassed $65 billion, including Airbnb, Dropbox, Zenefits and Stripe. In September 2016, Altman announced his expanded role as president of YC Group, which included Y Combinator and other units. Altman said that he hoped to expand Y Combinator to fund 1,000 new companies per year. He also tried to expand the types of companies funded by YC, especially "hard technology" companies. In October 2015, Altman announced YC Continuity, a $700 million equity fund investing in YC companies as they matured. A week earlier, Altman had introduced Y Combinator Research, a non-profit research lab, and donated $10 million to fund it. In March 2019, YC announced Altman's transition from the president of the company to a less hands-on role as chairman of the board, for him to focus on OpenAI. This decision came shortly after YC announced it would be moving its headquarters to San Francisco.As of early 2020, he was no longer affiliated with YC. It was later reported that Altman was fired from YC and had appointed himself chairman without authorization.

Altman co-founded Tools For Humanity in 2019, a company which builds and distributes systems designed to scan people's eyes to provide authentication and verify proof of personhood to counter fraud. People who agree to have their eyes scanned are compensated with a cryptocurrency called Worldcoin.Tools For Humanity describes its cryptocurrency as similar to universal basic income.

Altman has several other investments, including "Humane," the world's first wearable computer powered by AI, "Retro Biosciences," a research company aiming to extend human life by 10 years, and "Helion Energy," an American fusion research company.