Who is Sam Altman, the man behind internet sensation ChatGPT
The past few months have seen ChatGPT rising from a novelty to an internet sensation. The chatbot is known for its ability to engage in human-like conversations and generate anything from code to music. Much has been talked about the chatbot, but not a lot about the man behind it all - Sam Altman, the co-founder of OpenAI. So, who is he?
Altman learned programming on a Macintosh he received at 8
Altman, now 37, was born in Chicago, Illinois in 1985. He grew up in St. Louis, Missouri. At the age of eight, Altman received a Macintosh computer. Precocious and efficient, he learned to program and disassemble the computer. Altman later told The New Yorker that the Macintosh also helped him with his sexuality. He came out as gay to his parents at 16.
AOL chatrooms helped him get comfortable with his sexuality
Altman said AOL chatrooms helped him get comfortable with his sexuality. "Growing up gay in the Midwest in the two-thousands wasn't the most awesome thing. And finding AOL chat rooms were transformative. Secrets are bad when you're eleven or twelve," he told The New Yorker.
Post that, Altman came out to his whole community
He went to John Burroughs, a prep school in St. Louis. When a Christian group boycotted an assembly about sexuality at his school, Altman came out as gay to the whole community. He also asked whether the school wanted to be a repressive place or open to different ideas. "What Sam did changed the school," his college counselor Madelyn Gray told The New Yorker.
He dropped out of college to work on Loopt
Altman went to Stanford University to study computer science. After two years, however, he dropped out of college along with two friends to work on Loopt, a mobile app that shared the user's location with their friends. Loopt was part of the first batch of eight companies at Y Combinator (YC), a start-up accelerator. The same batch had Reddit.
Loopt was sold for $43 million
Loopt got into YC because Altman in particular passed the accelerator's young founder's test. He worked extremely hard on Loopt during the summer when he got scurvy. The company's valuation reached $175 million, but customers never really bought into it. In 2012, Altman and the other founders sold the company for $43 million. The sale price was close to how much they raised.
Altman dated Loopt's co-founder for 9 years
Altman was in a relationship with one of the founders of Loopt, Nick Savo. They were together for nine years but broke up when the company was sold. "I thought I was going to marry him," he told The New Yorker.
He founded a venture fund called Hydrazine after Loopt
After Loopt, he founded a venture fund called Hydrazine. Altman raised $21 million, a significant portion of which came from Peter Thiel, a co-founder of PayPal. He invested 75% of the fund in YC companies. Altman led the Series B funding of Reddit, a rather disorganized company at the time. His reasoning was "messy companies" will be "hugely underpriced."
Altman left the venture fund after 4 years
Despite Hydrazine's success, Altman left the venture fund as he did not like being oppositional to the entrepreneur. Also, he did not like the culture where one billion was dismissed as "a buck." Altman withdrew to his four-bedroom house in San Francisco's Mission District. He was happy with his cars, Big Sur property, and a $10 million reserve.
He took YC's mantle after Paul Graham
Altman's next gig was at YC. When Paul Graham, the founder of YC, decided to retire and spend time with his family, his only choice to run the accelerator was Altman. He took the job with a big smile. Under his stewardship, YC focused more on letting engineering and science start-ups into each batch of the accelerator.
Altman was called 'start-up Yoda' due to his prescience
Altman wanted to start a nuclear energy start-up. Instead, YC led by him funded the best fission and fusion start-ups he could find. He soon became known for his strategic and ambitious mind amongst investors. As YC focused more on hard tech, Altman educated himself on the technical side of things. His prescience led people to call him "start-up Yoda."
He founded OpenAI in 2015 with Elon Musk
In 2015, Altman founded OpenAI with Tesla and Twitter CEO Elon Musk. Their goal was to ensure that a supreme AI does not wipe out mankind. They were mainly wary of the work of Google's DeepMind Technologies division. Some of the prominent names in Silicon Valley, including LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman and Peter Thiel, collectively pledged $1 billion to OpenAI.
Altman started an iris-scanning crypto company
In 2021, Altman co-founded Worldcoin with Alex Blania and Max Novendstren. The company aims to put digital money in the hands of every human being. To make sure that no one received the crypto more than once, the company proposes scanning people's iris with a small chromatic sphere called an orb. Recently, the company announced that it onboarded one million people.
He preps for doomsday
Altman once told his friends, "I prep for survival." According to Altman, the world could come to an end in three different ways - a lethal synthetic virus, an AI attack, and nations engaging in a nuclear war over scarce resources. His apocalypse kit includes guns, gold, potassium iodide, antibiotics, batteries, water, and gas masks from the Israeli Defense Force.
