¶ Sam Altman
Samuel Harris Altman is an American entrepreneur, investor and programmer.
¶ History
Altman was born in 1985 in Chicago, Illinois, and moved to St. Louis, Missouri at a young age.[1]
¶ Education
Altman attended John Burroughs School for secondary school.[2] He studied computer science at Stanford University, where he worked in the school's artificial intelligence lab.[3]
¶ Career
After only two years at Stanford, in 2005, Altman dropped out and co-founded Loopt at the age of 19.[4] The company was included in Y Combinator's very first round of startups.[5]
Altman's Twitter profile was created in July 2006.[6]
Altman became a partner at Y Combinator in 2011.[7]
Loopt was acquired by Green Dot in March 2012 for $43.4 million.[8] Altman founded Hydrazine Capital the following month with his brother Jack Altman.[9][10]
Altman was made President of Y Combinator in February 2014.[11] He spent 8 days as CEO of Reddit while the company transitioned to a replacement for Yishan Wong, who had resigned the week prior.[12]
On March 10, 2015, Altman announced that Peter Thiel had joined Y Combinator as a partner. He described Thiel as "one of the two people" who had taught him "the most about how to invest in startups."[13]
On December 11, 2015, Altman was announced as a founding board member of OpenAI alongside Elon Musk.[14]
Altman first invested in HelixNano in December 2016.[15]
Altman stepped down from his role of President at Y Combinator in March 2019.[16] He took over as CEO at OpenAI later that year.[17]
Altman co-founded Tools for Humanity in 2019 with Alex Blania,[18] which began development on Worldcoin with Max Novendstern, who co-founded the project.[19]
¶ COVID-19
Following the declaration of the COVID-19 pandemic, Altman and Dustin Moskovitz engaged in discussions that led to the formation of Help With COVID, an online portal cataloguing projects and resources related to the crisis.[20]
Altman provided further investment funding to HelixNano in March 2020, and again two years later in March 2022.[15:1]
In April 2020, Altman set up Project Covalence in order to "help researchers rapidly launch clinical trials" to accelerate the "development of treatments and diagnostics for COVID-19."[21] His collaborators were Mark Fishman and TrialSpark.[22]
In May 2020, Altman donated $250k to American Bridge 21st Century, a super PAC supporting the successful election of Joe Biden to the presidency.[23]
¶ Investments
Companies in which Altman has personally invested include:[15:2][24][1:1]
- Airbnb
- Asana
- Atmos
- Brinc Drones
- Campuswire
- Change.org
- Coco Delivery
- Codeacademy
- FarmLogs
- Helion Energy
- HelixNano
- Humane
- Instacart
- Journey Colab
- Lattice
- Meter
- Nautilus Labs
- Neuralink
- Patreon
- Rain Neuromorphics
- Rescale
- Retro Biosciences
- Rewind AI
- Science Exchange
- Stripe
- TrialSpark
- TrueNorth
- ZeroDown
¶ External links
Ijarotimi, T. (2023, April 1). Who is Sam Altman? A look into the life of a tech entrepreneur and investor. Interesting Engineering. https://web.archive.org/web/20230628131709/https://interestingengineering.com/culture/who-is-sam-altman ↩︎ ↩︎
Nast, C. (2016, October 3). Sam Altman’s Manifest Destiny. The New Yorker. http://archive.today/2023.05.12-065054/https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/10/10/sam-altmans-manifest-destiny ↩︎
Partners. Y Combinator. Retrieved June 25, 2014, from https://web.archive.org/web/20140625021419/http://ycombinator.com/people.html ↩︎
Ankeny, J. (2015, April 25). Meet Y Combinator’s Bold Whiz Kid Boss. Entrepreneur. https://web.archive.org/web/20151222150644/http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/244508 ↩︎
Gannes, L. (2014, March 18). Y Combinator’s New Head Startup Whisperer Sam Altman Is Quite a Talker. Vox. https://web.archive.org/web/20230728003813/https://www.vox.com/2014/3/18/11624658/y-combinators-new-head-startup-whisperer-sam-altman-is-quite-a-talker ↩︎
Sam Altman (@sama). Twitter. Retrieved March 13, 2015, from https://web.archive.org/web/20150313215548/https://twitter.com/sama ↩︎
Clark, K. (2019, May 2). Y Combinator president Sam Altman is stepping down amid a series of changes at the accelerator. TechCrunch. https://web.archive.org/web/20190502174335/https://techcrunch.com/2019/03/08/y-combinator-president-sam-altman-is-stepping-down-amid-a-series-of-changes-at-the-accelerator/ ↩︎
Vascellaro, J. E. (2012, March 9). Startup Loopt Lands with Green Dot. Wall Street Journal. http://archive.today/2021.12.15-034553/https://www.wsj.com/articles/BL-DGB-24072 ↩︎
HYDRAZINE CAPITAL GP, LLC. (2023). Form ADV - Uniform Application for Investment Adviser Registration and Report by Exempt Reporting Advisers. Securities and Exchange Commission. https://reports.adviserinfo.sec.gov/reports/ADV/165781/PDF/165781.pdf ↩︎
Hydrazine Capital LP - Company Profile and News. Bloomberg. Retrieved July 27, 2023, from http://archive.today/2023.07.27-204255/https://www.bloomberg.com/profile/company/1003986D:US ↩︎
Sam Altman on Founders and the Fear of Rejection. (2015, December 2). Y Combinator. http://archive.today/2023.07.27-054842/https://www.ycombinator.com/blog/sam-altman-startup-school-radio/ ↩︎
Altman, S. (2014, November 13). A new team at reddit. Sam Altman. https://web.archive.org/web/20150213043217/http://blog.samaltman.com/a-new-team-at-reddit ↩︎
Altman, S. (2015, March 10). Welcome Peter. Y Combinator. https://web.archive.org/web/20230727175430/https://www.ycombinator.com/blog/welcome-peter ↩︎
Brockman, G., & Sutskever, I. (2015, December 11). Introducing OpenAI. OpenAI. https://web.archive.org/web/20170808184623/https://blog.openai.com/introducing-openai/ ↩︎
Nguyen, B. (2023, February 19). ChatGPT creator Sam Altman has invested in dozens of companies over the years, from Elon Musk’s Neuralink to Reddit. Business Insider. http://archive.today/2023.02.20-023221/https://www.businessinsider.com/list-of-companies-openai-sam-altman-invested-in-2023-2 ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎
Loizos, C. (2019, March 9). Did Sam Altman make YC better or worse? TechCrunch. https://web.archive.org/web/20191216202824/https://techcrunch.com/2019/03/09/did-sam-altman-make-yc-better-or-worse/ ↩︎
De Vynck, G. (2023, April 9). The man who unleashed AI on an unsuspecting Silicon Valley. Washington Post. http://archive.today/2023.04.09-102300/https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/04/09/sam-altman-openai-chatgpt/ ↩︎
Tools For Humanity - Crunchbase Company Profile & Funding. Crunchbase. Retrieved July 27, 2023, from https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/tools-for-humanity-a4d2 ↩︎
Singh, M. (2022, August 25). Worldcoin co-founder leaves firm to start new venture. TechCrunch. http://archive.today/2023.07.27-162251/https://techcrunch.com/2022/08/24/worldcoin-co-founder-novendstern-leaves-startup-to-start-new-venture/ ↩︎
About. Help with Covid. Retrieved August 1, 2020, from https://web.archive.org/web/20200801074318/https://helpwithcovid.com/about ↩︎
Altman, S. (2020, June 16). Project Covalence. Sam Altman. http://archive.today/2020.06.21-210404/https://blog.samaltman.com/project-covalence ↩︎
Home. Project Covalence. Retrieved May 5, 2021, from https://web.archive.org/web/20210505084035/https://projectcovalence.com/ ↩︎
Tindera, M. (2020, May 22). Silicon Valley’s Sam Altman Gave $250,000 To Democratic Super-PAC Supporting Biden. Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/michelatindera/2020/05/22/silicon-valleys-sam-altman-gave-250000-to-democratic-super-pac-supporting-biden/ ↩︎
Regalado, A. (2023, March 8). Sam Altman invested $180 million into a company trying to delay death. MIT Technology Review. http://archive.today/2023.03.08-134815/https://www.technologyreview.com/2023/03/08/1069523/sam-altman-investment-180-million-retro-biosciences-longevity-death/ ↩︎