Sam Altman: The OpenAI Chief Who Went From Stanford Dropout to ChatGPT
Sam Altman, chief executive of OpenAI. Photo: TechCrunch / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0
Sam Altman is the chief executive of OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, and one of the most recognizable figures in the technology business. His path ran from a Missouri childhood to a Stanford dropout’s startup, through a company sale and a run at the top of Silicon Valley’s best-known startup accelerator, and then into artificial intelligence.
Nothing in the sources reviewed for this profile ties Altman to Vermont, so this is a national profile.
From St. Louis to Stanford
Altman was born April 22, 1985, in Chicago. His family moved to Clayton, Missouri, in 1989. He is the eldest of four siblings. According to Wikipedia, his mother is a dermatologist and his father was a real estate broker. He got his first computer, a Macintosh, at age 8, and he later attended John Burroughs School in Ladue, Missouri.
He studied computer science at Stanford University for two years and left in 2005 without a degree. That same year, at 19, he co-founded Loopt, a location-based social networking app. The company raised more than $30 million in venture capital. Green Dot Corporation bought it in March 2012 for $43.4 million.
Y Combinator and investing
Altman joined the startup accelerator Y Combinator as a partner in 2011. In February 2014 he became its president, succeeding co-founder Paul Graham. He left the role in 2019.
He also invested on his own. With his brother Jack, he started Hydrazine Capital in April 2012 with an initial $21 million fund. Wikipedia reports that his holdings spanned more than 400 companies, valued at about $2.8 billion as of June 2024. Among them was Reddit, where he served as chief executive for eight days in 2014 and later sat on the board until 2022.
His other ventures include Tools for Humanity, the company behind Worldcoin, which he co-founded in 2019. The project scans people’s irises in exchange for a digital identity and cryptocurrency, and regulators in several countries have investigated or suspended it. He has also been chairman of Helion Energy, a fusion company, and co-founded the AltC blank-check company, which merged with nuclear developer Oklo in May 2024. He stepped down as Oklo’s chairman in April 2025.
OpenAI
OpenAI was founded in 2015 as a nonprofit. Altman was among the co-founders, along with Greg Brockman and Elon Musk. He became chief executive in March 2019. The company released ChatGPT in late 2022, and the chatbot brought generative AI to a mass audience within months.
The most dramatic episode of his career came on November 17, 2023, when OpenAI’s board removed him, saying he had not been consistently candid with it. Employees and investors pushed back hard. Altman was reinstated on November 21, 2023, and the board was rebuilt, with Bret Taylor as chair and Lawrence Summers among the new members.
Musk sued the company and Altman in February 2024. Wikipedia reports that jury selection in the case began April 27, 2026, and that the jury found Musk had waited too long to bring his claims.
Altman has also been a regular voice on AI policy. Wikipedia reports that on September 2, 2026, he spoke at the G20 Innovation Ministerial in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, urging countries to adopt AI, and that on September 12 he publicly agreed with Anthropic chief executive Dario Amodei on slowing the development of advanced AI and backing independent evaluators.
Personal life
Altman married Oliver Mulherin in January 2024 in Hawaii. The two signed the Giving Pledge in May 2024. Wikipedia reports that a son was born to the couple in 2025 via surrogacy. A film, Artificial, casts actor Andrew Garfield as Altman.
Source: Wikipedia, “Sam Altman,” en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam_Altman.
