Sam Altman Height, Weight, Age, Net Worth, Education, Family

Sam Altman is an American entrepreneur, investor, and programmer who is best known as the former CEO of OpenAI, an AI (artificial intelligence) laboratory that conducts research that could lead to the development and promotion of friendly AI. He was an initial board member when OpenAI was founded in 2015. Sam first came into the spotlight in 2005 when he co-founded Loopt, a service for smartphone users to share their location selectively with others – supported by a variety of privacy controls. Loopt had more than 5 million registered users and partnerships with every major American mobile phone carrier by March 2012 when it was acquired by Green Dot Corporation (an American financial technology and bank holding company that is the world’s largest prepaid debit card company by market capitalization (the total value of a publicly traded company’s outstanding common shares owned by stockholders)) for USD 43.4 million.

Besides Loopt and OpenAI, Sam has also had a long-term involvement with Y Combinator (a technology startup accelerator launched in March 2005 that is known for having launched numerous successful ventures including Airbnb, Coinbase, Dropbox, Quora, Reddit, and Twitch). He became a partner at Y Combinator in 2011, initially working there only on a part-time basis. In February 2014, he was named the startup accelerator’s president. In March 2019, Sam transitioned to a less hands-on role as Y Combinator‘s board chairman so that he could focus more on his role as the CEO of OpenAI. By early 2020, he had severed his ties with Y Combinator. He has also served as the chairman of the board for 2 nuclear energy companies – Helion Energy and Oklo.

Born Name

Samuel Harris Altman

Nick Name

Sam, Sama

Sun Sign

Taurus

Born Place

Chicago, Illinois, United States

Residence

Russian Hill, San Francisco, California, United States

Nationality

Education

Sam had attended the John Burroughs School, a private, non-sectarian college-preparatory school located in Ladue, an inner-ring suburb of St. Louis, Missouri, United States.

After his high school graduation, he joined Stanford University, a private research university in Stanford, California. In 2005, after about a year of studying computer science there, he dropped out without earning a degree.

Occupation

Entrepreneur, Investor, Programmer

Family

• Mother – Connie Gibstine (Dermatologist)
• Siblings – Jack Altman (Brother) (Entrepreneur, Co-founder of Hydrazine Capital (a venture capital firm that primarily invests in startups involved in the life sciences, specialty foods, marketplace, big data, healthcare, consumer networks, and enterprise software) and Lattice (a software company offering team management and analytics software))

Net Worth

Sam Altman’s net worth had been $500 million according to CelebrityNetWorth.com.

Build

Slim

Height

5 ft 11 in or 180.5 cm

Weight

72 kg or 158.5 lbs

Boyfriend / Spouse

Sam has dated –

1. Nick Sivo (2003-2012) – Sam began dating fellow entrepreneur Nick Sivo in 2003 and the duo co-founded Loopt (a service for smartphone users to share their location) in 2005. The pair broke up shortly after Loopt was acquired in March 2012.
2. Oliver Mulherin

Race / Ethnicity

White

He is of American descent.

Hair Color

Light Brown

Eye Color

Blue

Sexual Orientation

Gay

Distinctive Features

• Lanky frame
• Tousled, side-parted, wavy hair
• Clean-shaven look

Sam Altman Facts

1. In 2014, Sam was appointed the CEO of Reddit (an American social news aggregation, content rating, and discussion website) for 8 days, as a stopgap arrangement.
2. In 2017, an honorary Doctor of Engineering degree was conferred upon him by the University of Waterloo, a public research university with its main campus in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada.
3. Later that year, GLAAD (Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation), an American non-governmental media monitoring organization, honored Sam with the ‘Ric Weiland Award’ for promoting LGBTQ (a loosely defined grouping of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer individuals united by a common culture and social movements) acceptance in the tech sector. The award is named after Richard William ‘Ric’ Weiland (d. June 24, 2006), a computer software pioneer, programmer, and philanthropist. Ric was a quiet but well-respected donor to the LGBTQ social justice movement, the environment, health and human services, and education.
4. In 2018, Sam started a political project called The United Slate to improve housing and healthcare policies in the United States.
5. In 2019, he co-founded Tools For Humanity, a company building a global iris-based biometric system-based cryptocurrency called Worldcoin that would provide a reliable mechanism to authenticate humans online, counter bots, and deal with fake virtual identities.
6. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Sam initiated Project Covalence – an initiative to help researchers (investigating the COVID-19 virus) launch medical trials rapidly, in partnership with a clinical trial startup called TrialSpark.
7. In 2023, he was included in the ‘Time 100’, an annual list of the 100 most influential people in the world – published by Time, an American news magazine based in New York City.
8. Besides his San Francisco residence, Sam owns a weekend home in Napa, California.
9. He has been a vegetarian since childhood.
10. Sam is a ‘prepper’ (a term used to refer to survivalists who proactively prepare for emergencies, disasters, and disruptions to social order caused by political or economic crises).
11. In an interview, he revealed that he maintains an emergency kit that contains guns, gold, antibiotics, batteries, water, and gas masks. Sam also owns a plot of land in Big Sur (a rugged and mountainous section of the central coast of the U.S. state of California) where he could fly to in case of an emergency.
12. In November 2023, Sam was fired from his position as CEO at OpenAI after being accused of lying to the board of directors. Later, it was announced by Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella that Sam would join Microsoft to lead their advanced AI research team. Finally, in November 2023 itself, he was announced to be returning to OpenAI as its CEO.
13. In December 2023, Sam was named “CEO of the Year 2023” by TIME magazine.
14. In February 2024, he was seeking $7 trillion for an AI chip startup which would then be used for training AI models.

Featured Image by CNBC / Instagram