Sam Altman

Samuel Harris Altman born April 22 1985 is an American businessman and entrepreneur who has been the chief executive officer CEO of the artificial intelligence research organization OpenAI since 2019 Altman attended Stanford University for two years before dropping out and cofounding Loopt a smartphone geosocial networking service which raised more than US30 million in venture capital before being acquired by Green Dot Corporation for 434 million in cash In 2011 Altman joined Y Combinator a technology startup accelerator and venture capital firm and was the companys president from 2014 to 2019 After cofounding OpenAI in 2015 Altman later became the organizations CEO in 2019 In 2023 he was ousted by the organizations board of directors who cited a lack of confidence in his ability to continue leading OpenAI in an official post However the move was met with significant backlash from employees and investors resulting in Altmans reinstatement five days later and the formation of a new board Having overseen the launch of ChatGPT in November 2022 he has been described as one of the leading figures of the AI boom In 2025 Altman was named among the Architects of AI for Times Person of the Year His net worth was estimated at US33 billion by Forbes in March 2026 Description above from the Wikipedia article Sam Altman licensed under CCBYSA full list of contributors on Wikipedia