Sam Altman is one of the most popular names in the tech world right now with his latest achievements in AI. After working with several companies as a co-founder, Sam currently holds the CEO title for OpenAI. Through this former non-profit organization, he developed revolutionary projects like WorldCoin and ChatGPT. Let us walk you through his journey into AI, his net worth, and other investments in this article.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman Bio:

The Early Career of Sam Altman

The 38-year old Sam Altman has more in common with other tech leaders like Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, and Mark Zuckerberg than we can imagine – all of them are college dropouts! And, similar to them, Sam is rising to be an icon in the tech industry.

Even after wearing multiple hats as an American entrepreneur, investor, and programmer, Sam Altman is popularly known as the CEO of OpenAI today. After dropping out from college in 2005, he co-founded Loopt, a social-networking mobile application. Later in 2012, Loopt was acquired by Green Dot Corporation. 

After that, Altman joined Y Combinator, a startup accelerator, as a partner in 2011. He was made the president of Y Combinator in 2014 after serving 3 years as a partner. During his time at Y Combinator as a president, Altman is known to increase the company’s performance by 10x. Later, he became the Chairman of the Board and eventually left the company to focus more of his attention on OpenAI as a CEO.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman

Initially, OpenAI was founded as a non-profit organization for artificial intelligence research in 2015 by Sam Altman, Greg Brockman, Elon Musk, and others. In the same year, Altman was listed in Forbes 30 under 30 Venture Capital list with his investments. While Elon Musk left the OpenAI company in 2018, Sam was made CEO in the following year.

Sam Altman is the one behind the groundbreaking ChatGPT project launched last November through OpenAI. GPT-3 technology is the first major achievement of OpenAI, which turned into the ChatGPT we know today.

Today, from college students to corporate employees, everyone is using this AI tool to complete their professional and personal tasks. DALL.E is another noteworthy AI tool developed by OpenAI. While ChatGPT is a text-generating tool, DALL.E creates digital images based on users’ prompts.

Lately, Sam has been making headlines since he announced and launched the WorldCoin project in July this year at $2 per each token. It is a global-inclusive identity and financial network project which provides identity to humans by scanning their eye-balls. Sam believes that this project is essential to differentiate humans from AI bots, in a world where AI development is happening at a rapid pace.

Personal Life of Sam Altman

Sam Altman has been a vegetarian and Jewish since childhood and is based out of Chicago, Illinois, United States. He spent his early life in St. Louis, Missouri with his dermatologist mother. After attending John Burroughs School, he joined Stanford University in 2005 to study computer science. But dropped out after one year.

In an interview in 2016, Altman admitted that he is gay and recalled that having a computer since childhood helped him identify his sexuality. In the same interview, he also mentioned that growing up gay in the 2000s was not easy for him.

During the years he worked with Loopt, Altman dated his co-founder Nick Sivo for nine years and broke up when the company was acquired in 2012. Currently, Sam Altman’s partner is an Australian software engineer, Oliver Mulherin. Though he is based out of Chicago, Altman now lives in the Russian Hill neighborhood in San Francisco. He also owns a weekend home in Napa, California.

Altman is known as a Prepper, which means that he focuses on survival in extreme world conditions. In one of his interviews, he said that he has tools for survival like guns, gold, potassium iodide, antibiotics, batteries, gas masks from the Israeli Defense Force. He even has a big path of land in Big Sur that he can fly to if there is any need.

What is Sam Altman’s Net Worth?

Sam Altman’s net worth is around $500 million as per the wealth tracking website, Celebrity Net Worth. When he was asked about making a lot of money through OpenAI, Altman mentioned that he was paid enough for health insurance and holds no equity in the company. He also expressed that he is working at OpenAI because he loves his work.

However, OpenAI raised over 300 million worth of funds earlier this year for the WorldCoin project. The company was valued at somewhere between 27 billion to 29 billion. Other than his work as a CEO at OpenAI and WorldCoin project, Altman made several investments in companies like Airbnb, Reddit, Asana, Instacart, Stripe, and more.

Apart from his professional work, Sam Altman is a philanthropist at heart. He played a part in funding Project Covalence to develop clinical COVID-19 trials. Altman also donated a quarter of a million dollars in 2020 to American Bridge 21st Century as a part of Joe Biden’s presidential campaign.

Sam Altman also serves as a Chairman of the Board for nuclear companies Oklo and Helion. He believes that nuclear energy is one of the world’s critical industries that requires technical development.

Conclusion

Overall, the OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is becoming more popular by the day. And, he is emerging as the next icon in the tech industry after Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg, and Elon Musk. 

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