OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has been learning to code since age 8. He is a doomsday preparer with a stash gun, gas masks, and gold.

Sam Altman, 37 years old, was born in St. Louis, Missouri. When he was eight years old, he learned to program and disassemble a Macintosh computer. [TAG1][TAG31]

Source: The New Yorker

According to The New Yorker, he said that he was more sexually confident after he had a Mac. Altman was 16 when he came out to his parents. [TAG2][TAG32]

He told The New Yorker that growing up gay in the Midwest, in the two-thousands, was not an amazing experience. "And I found AOL chat rooms were transformative. When you're eleven, twelve, secrets are terrible

Source: The New Yorker

John Burroughs School was his private college-preparatory school. Louis. [TAG3][TAG33]

After a Christian group boycotted Altman's school's assembly about sexuality, Altman became gay to the entire community.

Madelyn Gray, his college counselor, said that Sam's actions "changed the school." "It was like someone opened a huge box with all kinds of children and let them out into this world."

Source: The New Yorker

Altman was a Stanford University computer science major for two years. He and two of his classmates then left to start working full-time on Loopt's mobile app that shared the user's location with friends. [TAG4][TAG34]

Source: The New Yorker

Loopt was one of the eight startups that Y Combinator started. Loopt was part of the first batch of eight startups that received $6,000 each for their founders. [TAG5][TAG35]

Source: The New Yorker and The Business of Business

Loopt was eventually valued at $175 million, but it failed to attract enough interest. The founders then sold Loopt for $43 million in 2012. [TAG6][TAG36]

It was almost equal to the amount it raised from investors at $43 million. Green Dot, a bank known for its prepaid cards, purchased the company.

Nick Sivo, one of Loopt's cofounders and Altman dated nine years but broke up after the company was sold.

It is not clear what Altman's net worth is at the moment.

Source: The Wall Street Journal. All Things Digital, Y Combinator. The New Yorker.

Altman, who had previously founded Loopt Venture Capital, raised $21 million. This included a substantial portion of the $5 million Altman received from Loopt and an investment by billionaire entrepreneur Peter Thiel. [TAG7][TAG37]

Altman invested 75% in YC companies and was the leader of Reddit's Series A fundraising round.

According to him, you want to invest in broken, messy companies. The warts can be treated on top and the company will be greatly underpriced because of them.

Paul Graham, the founder of Y Combinator, chose Altman at 31 to succeed him in 2014 as president. [TAG8][TAG38]

Altman was YC president during the fall 2014. He taught a series of lectures at Stanford entitled "How to Start a Startup." [TAG9][TAG39]

Source: How to Start A Startup

Altman, who was 29 years old at the time of his listing on Forbes 30 Under 30, was recognized for his venture capital investment. [TAG10][TAG40]

Source: Forbes

He wanted to allow more engineering and science startups to enter each batch. After he was elected president of YC, he chose a fission startup and a fusion startup because he wanted his own nuclear-energy company. He served on the boards of both companies as an investor and board member. [TAG11][TAG41]

Mark Andreessen, cofounder and CEO of venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz said that "Under Sam the level of YC’s ambition has gone up tenx."

Source: The New Yorker

Altman once said to two YC founders he enjoys racing cars. He had five of them, including two McLarens as well as an old Tesla. Altman also stated that he enjoys renting planes and flying them around California. [TAG12][TAG42]

Source: The New Yorker

Altman stated to the founders at Shypmate that he "prepare for survival" and warned about a "lethal synthetic viral", AI attacking humans or nuclear war. [TAG13][TAG43]

Altman stated to the founders that he tried not to think too much about it in 2016. Altman stated that he had guns, gold, potassium Iodide and batteries. He also has water and gas masks from Israel's Defense Force.

Source: The New Yorker

Altman's mom, a dermatologist and a mother to Altman, said that her son keeps a lot of things inside. He will call me and tell me he has headaches. But he'll also have Googled the topic, so there may be some cyber-chondria. I must assure him that he does not have lymphoma or meningitis, and that stress is the cause. "[TAG14][TAG44]

Source: The New Yorker

Altman is also the cofounder and CEO of Lattice, a platform for employee management. Jack Altman is Altman's brother. The Altmans, along with Max, launched Apollo in 2020. This fund is focused on financing "moonshot companies." [TAG15][TAG45]

Startups known as "Moonshot" are those that are financially risky, but could be rewarded with a breakthrough development.

Source: Insider

Altman and Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla, SpaceX, and co-founded OpenAI in 2015. The goal of the non-profit AI company was to ensure that AI does not wipe out humankind. [TAG16][TAG46]

"We talked about what the best thing that we could do to ensure that the future is bright." In 2015, Elon Musk spoke to The New York Times. We could either sit back or encourage regulation oversight. Or we could join the right structure with people who are deeply committed to the development of A.I. "In a safe and beneficial way for humanity."

Source: Insider, The New York Times

Along with Altman, Musk and Altman, some of Silicon Valley's most important names pledged $1 Billion to OpenAI, along with Peter Thiel and Reid Hoffman, cofounders of LinkedIn. [TAG17][TAG47]

Source: Insider

Altman tweeted after the 2016 election that he had voted against Donald Trump. He said that he decided to speak to 100 Trump supporters across the US to learn what they thought about Trump. Altman also wanted to find out "what would convince them to not vote for him in future." "[TAG18][TAG48]

Altman posted a Twitter thread saying he was voting against Trump "because I believe the principles that he stands for are an unacceptable threat to America."

He said that Peter Thiel was still working for YC at that time and "is a high-profile supporter of Trump" and that, "I disagree."

He said that YC would not fire anyone for supporting a nominee of the major party.

Thiel and YC stopped working together a few years later, in 2017, for unknown reasons.

Altman stated that he did not anticipate to speak to so many Muslims and Mexicans during his interviews.

Altman said that almost all the people he spoke to were willing to talk with him. However, they didn't want their names to be shared in fear of being "targeted" by Silicon Valley "people if they knew I voted in his favor." Altman stated that one of the Silicon Valley people Altman spoke to made him sign confidentiality agreements before he talked because she was afraid of losing her job as a supporter of Trump.

Source: Twitter, Sam Altman and Insider

Altman resigned as president of YC in March 2019, to concentrate on OpenAI. Altman remained as the chairman of the accelerator. [TAG19][TAG49]

Source: Insider

Altman was asked by StrictlyVC in 2019 how OpenAI would make a profit. He said that he didn't know. "[TAG20][TAG50]

Altman stated that OpenAI has "never made any revenues" and had "no current plans for making revenue."

He said that he didn't know how he would generate revenue one day.

Source: TechCrunch

After OpenAI transformed from a non-profit company to a "capped profit" entity, Altman was appointed CEO of OpenAI in May 2019. [TAG21][TAG51]

OpenAI stated on its blog that it wanted to improve our ability to raise capital and still serve our mission. "No pre-existing legal structures we know of strikes a right balance." OpenAI LP is a hybrid for-profit-nonprofit company that we call a 'capped profit' company.

Source: Insider, Fortune

Altman flew to Seattle with Satya Nadella to show OpenAI's AI models to him, WSJ reported. In 2019, OpenAI was awarded a $1B investment by Microsoft. [TAG22][TAG52]

Source: The Wall Street Journal. LinkedIn. Insider

OpenAI insiders, current and former, told Fortune that Altman became the CEO and the company began to focus more on natural language processing after Microsoft's investment. [TAG23][TAG53]

Altman and OpenAI chief scientist Ilya Sutskever said that focusing on large language models was the best way to achieve AGI (or adjusted gross income).

Source: Fortune

Altman, along with his cofounders Alex Blania, Max Novendstern, created a global cryptocurrency project called Worldcoin. The goal was to provide everyone around the globe access to crypto through scanning their iris using an orb. [TAG24][TAG54]

Although the company was founded in 2020, it stopped operating in some countries in 2022 because of logistics problems. Recently, the company tweeted that it had reached 1,000,000 people and that they have onboarded more than 150,000 new crypto users.

Source: Bloomberg, Insider and Twitter

OpenAI, under Altman's leadership, has made popular generative AI tools available to the public such as ChatGPT and DALL-E. [TAG25][TAG55]

ChatGPT and DALL-E are both "generative" AI. This means that the bot creates its own art and text based on information it receives.

Altman tweeted after ChatGPT's release on November 30 that it had exceeded 1 million users in just five days.

Source: Insider. Insider. Twitter

ChatGPT was publicly made public to allow OpenAI to use user feedback in order for the bot's improvement. Altman tweeted that ChatGPT was "incredibly limited but good enough at certain things to give the impression of greatness". "[TAG26][TAG56]

Altman tweeted December 12th that ChatGPT was great for "fun creative inspiring" but not so good to search facts.

ChatGPT has recently begun testing ChatGPT Professional, a paid version that offers better access to the bot. Altman tweeted in December that OpenAI "will need to monetize them somehow at some point; compute costs are eye-watering."

Source: Insider. Insider. Twitter. Twitter.

Microsoft announced this month that it would make a multibillion-dollar investment in OpenAI. While details of the investment are not available, it is believed that Microsoft invested $10 billion. [TAG27][TAG57]

Other venture capitalists had previously wanted to purchase shares from OpenAI employees, in a tender offering that valued OpenAI at approximately $29 billion.

Source: Insider, Fortune

Altman remains interested in nuclear Fusion and donated $375 million to Helion Energy last year. [TAG28][TAG58]

Altman said that Helion was more than an investment for him. Altman said that OpenAI is the other thing I spend a lot time on. It's just a great place to be.

TechCrunch reported that he was "happy" that there is a fusion race, to create a low-cost system of fusion energy that could eventually power the Earth.

Source: TechCrunch, CNBC

OpenAI has just launched its pilot subscription plan to ChatGPT Plus. It costs $20 per month. [TAG29][TAG59]

ChatGPT Plus users who pay $20 per month get the following benefits: faster response times from the bot, use of the site even in high traffic periods, first access to new features, ChatGPT enhancements, and first access.

OpenAI stated that the subscription is only available to US residents. It will begin inviting those on the waiting list to sign up in the coming weeks.

Source: OpenAI