Openai
By codingstreets
Nov 19, 2023
Samuel Harris Altman was born on April 22, 1985, in Chicago, Illinois. He is an American entrepreneur and investor and one of the most prominent figures in the AI world.
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He attended John Burroughs School, a private school in Ladue, Missouri1. He later joined Stanford University to study computer science but dropped out after one year.
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At the age of 19, in 2005, Altman co-founded Loopt, a location-based social networking mobile application. Despite raising over $30 million in venture capital, Loopt failed to gain traction with enough users.
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After Loopt was acquired by Green Dot Corporation for $43.4 million in March 2012, Altman co-founded Hydrazine Capital with his brother, Jack Altman.
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Altman served as the CEO of Reddit for eight days in 2014 after CEO Yishan Wong resigned.
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Altman became a partner at Y Combinator in 2011 and was named president of Y Combinator by its co-founder, Paul Graham, in February 20141. He expanded Y Combinator to fund 1,000 new companies per year.
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YC Continuity and YC Research
In October 2015, Altman announced YC Continuity, a $700 million equity fund investing in YC companies as they matured. He also introduced Y Combinator Research, a non-profit research lab, and donated $10 million to fund it.
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Altman served as the chief executive officer of OpenAI from 2019 to 2023.
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Altman co-founded Tools For Humanity in 2019, a company building a global iris-based biometric system using cryptocurrency, called Worldcoin.
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As of 2023, Sam Altman has accumulated a fortune of around $500 million through his numerous business ventures.
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