Sam Altman Headshot
Report a problem with this profile
[email protected]

Sam Altman    

Head of AI Research Team at Microsoft; Entrepreneur, Programmer & Blogger; Former CEO of OpenAl

Sam Altman is an American entrepreneur and investor who served as the president of Y Combinator from 2014 to 2019, and as the CEO of OpenAI until November 2023. He co-founded Loopt, a location-based social networking app. He now leads an advanced AI research team at Microsoft which he joined in November 2023.

Prior to taking over as Y Combinator's president, Altman was a part-time partner at Y Combinator. In addition to his investment in technology startups, he has shown particular interest in nuclear energy, serving as the chairman of the board for Helion and Oklo, nuclear fusion and fission companies.

Altman has consistently been recognized for his entrepreneurship. He was featured in Inc. Magazine's Top 30 Entrepreneurs Under 30, BusinessWeek's Tech's Best Entrepreneurs, Forbes' 30 Under 30, and was named one of the 100 most influential people in the world by Time magazine in 2023. His contributions to the LGBTQ community were acknowledged when he received the Ric Weiland Award from GLAAD.

As an early innovator in mobile location services, Altman joined Apple CEO Steve Jobs on stage in 2008, presenting Loopt as one of the first applications in the iPhone App Store. He also co-founded Tools For Humanity, a company building a global iris-based biometric system using a cryptocurrency called Worldcoin. Altman helped raise $1 billion from Microsoft for OpenAI and during the launch of Project Covalence to aid researchers in launching clinical trials during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Altman has appeared on CNN, The Economist, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and numerous other media outlets.

News


TECH Sam Altman leaves OpenAI, Mira Murati appointed interim boss
The race to build AI that benefits humanity with Sam Altman
In this new season of The TED Interview, conversations with people who make a case for ... optimism. Not some blind, hopeful feeling, but the conviction that somewhere out there are solutions that, given the right attention and resources, can guide us out of the dark place we're in. For the first episode: artificial intelligence. Will innovation in AI drastically improve our lives, or destroy humanity as we know it? Head of TED Chris Anderson sits down with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, who makes a case for AI's potential to make the future better for all of us -- and explains how his company is leading that charge with an unusual new business model. Listen and subscribe to The TED Interview and more podcasts from the TED Audio Collective wherever you're listening to this.
This is the 'bubble' that people in the tech industry should fear: Leader of Silicon Valley's top startup school
Sam Altman, leader of startup school and venture-capital fund Y-Combinator, doesn't think we are in a tech bubble.
Y Combinator President Sam Altman Is Dreaming Big | Fast ...
Y Combinator President Sam Altman Is Dreaming Big. The Silicon Valley startup factory that birthed Airbnb and Dropbox has grown even more ambitious under ...

Related Speakers View all


More like Sam