The career rise of OpenAI's billionaire CEO, Sam Altman

• Sam Altman has catapulted from Silicon Valley star to one of the most powerful CEOs.
• The release of ChatGPT in 2022 catapulted Altman to worldwide fame.
• Since then, he's led the charge to make OpenAI the first company to unleash the power of AGI.

OpenAI Sam Altman thinks he can see the future better than some people.

"I think I am unusually good at projecting multiple things— years or a couple of decades into the future—and understanding how those are going to interact together," Altman told Forbes in February.

What is clear is that in 2026 and beyond, OpenAI and Altman have a lot riding on his vision.

In 2022, Altman oversaw the release of ChatGPT, kicking off what Bill Gates called "the age of AI." Just over three years removed from the moment, Altman's rivals are applying the pressure like never before.

By many accounts, Google has either caught up or surpassed OpenAI. The search giant, Microsoft, and Meta, are spending record sums to build the future of AI.

Rivals, like Elon Musk and Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, continue to taunt him through the struggles.

All the while, Altman has spun OpenAI from a research lab into a major company, even boasting a social media play. And he still has yet to reveal whatever mysterious device he's cooking up with Jony Ive, Apple's former design chief.

If the past is any indication, Altman is tough to bet against.

In just under a decade, he went from being part of the first Y-Combinator batch to leading the famed startup incubator. A billionaire before he turned 40, the entrepreneur is no longer just a beacon of Silicon Valley. Altman is now a co-Time Person of the Year and a frequent guest of world leaders.

Here's a look at Altman's life and career so far.

Altman's early-life and tech career

Altman grew up in St. Louis and he was a computer whiz from a young age.

He learned how to program and take apart a Macintosh computer when he was 8 years old, according to The New Yorker. He attended John Burroughs School, a private, nonsectarian college-preparatory school in St. Louis.

Altman has said that having a Mac helped him with his sexuality. He came out as gay after a Christian group boycotted an assembly at his school that was about sexuality.

"Growing up gay in the Midwest in the two-thousands was not the most awesome thing," he told The New Yorker in 2016. "And finding AOL chat rooms was transformative. Secrets are bad when you're eleven or twelve."

Altman studied computer science at Stanford University before dropping out to start an app. The app, which became Loopt, was part of the first group of companies at startup accelerator Y Combinator.

Loopt eventually reached a $175 million valuation. The $43 million sale price was close to how much it had raised from investors, The Wall Street Journal reported. The company was acquired by Green Dot, a banking company known for prepaid cards.

In 2014, at the age of 28, Altman was chosen by Y Combinator founder Paul Graham to succeed him as president of the startup accelerator.

While he was YC president, Altman taught a lecture series at Stanford called "How to Start a Startup." The next year, at 29, Altman was featured on the Forbes 30 Under 30 list for venture capital.

Founding OpenAI

In 2015, Altman cofounded OpenAI with Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla and SpaceX. Their goal for the nonprofit artificial intelligence company was to make sure AI doesn't wipe out humans.

Some of Silicon Valley's most prominent names pledged $1 billion to OpenAI, including Reid Hoffman, the cofounder of LinkedIn, and Thiel. Altman stepped down as YC president in March 2019 to focus on OpenAI.

Altman and OpenAI's now-former chief scientist, Ilya Sutskever, said the move to focus on large language models was the best way for the company to reach artificial general intelligence, or AGI, a system that has broad human-level cognitive abilities.

OpenAI received a $1 billion investment from Microsoft in 2019, the beginning of a major partnership for both companies.

Under Altman's early tenure, OpenAI released popular generative AI tools to the public, including DALL-E and ChatGPT.

Both DALL-E and ChatGPT are known as "generative" AI, meaning the bot creates its own artwork and text based on information it is fed.

After ChatGPT was released on November 30, 2022, Altman tweeted that it had reached over 1 million users in five days. As of early 2026, ChatGPT is up to 300 million weekly active users.

OpenAI ouster and return

OpenAI built on ChatGPT's public launch with a series of major announcements throughout 2023, including the release of GPT-4, an extension of their partnership with Microsoft, and the announcement of ChatGPT Plus (a subscription tier).

In November, OpenAI's board of directors announced the biggest news: Altman was out as CEO and leaving the board "effectively immediately." The board said Altman was being removed because he "was not consistently candid in his communications with the board."

Sutskever has expressed remorse for his participation in Altman's removal. Sutskever and three other members did not return to the reconfigured board when Altman was reinstated.

Altman, like many other tech CEOs, was front and center for President Donald Trump's return to power on January 20, 2025. A day after Trump's inauguration, Altman joined Oracle CTO Larry Ellison, SoftBank founder Masayoshi Son, and Trump to announce a partnership to fund a $500 billion investment in US AI. The companies would form Stargate, a project that seeks to build US AI infrastructure and create jobs.

In February 2024, Musk made a $97.4 billion offer to take over OpenAI. Altman declined the offer from his one-time collaborator. Within weeks, Musk, who launched his own competing AI company, xAI, in July 2023, sued OpenAI, Altman, and other senior executives over OpenAI's move away from its original, non-profit mission.

Altman's relationship with Musk has become increasingly tense over the years. As of February 2026, a trial is set to begin in April. In the interim, Musk and Altman have continued to trade barbs, including when OpenAI's CEO said that getting Musk under oath would be "Christmas in April."

Since his return, Altman has overseen a sweeping expansion of OpenAI's ambitions.

In October 2025, OpenAI completed its restructuring, spinning off its for-profit arm into a public benefit corporation. Microsoft retains a 27% stake in the for-profit venture, but the announcement formalized a shift in the relationship between the two companies.

Altman has softened on some of his views as OpenAI seeks revenue, most notably by introducing ads to lower tiers of ChatGPT. In May 2024, Altman called ads "a last resort for us as a business model."

In 2025 alone, OpenAI launched Atlas, its entry into the browser wars and Sora, its TikTok-esque AI video generation app. In May, Altman announced that he had been working with Ive on an AI-powered consumer device. OpenAI is also making waves in the payment space and is exploring making its own advanced chips.

Altman also brought on former Instacart CEO Fidji Simo to serve as CEO of Applications.

All of this explains why Altman was one of eight architects of AI to be crowned as Time Magazine's 2025 Person of the Year.

How Altman built his wealth

Despite Altman's status as CEO, he holds no equity in OpenAI — a status he has said he wished he had changed "a long time ago."

"i think it would have led to far fewer conspiracy theories; people seem very able to understand 'ok that dude is doing it because he wants more money' but less so "he just thinks technology is cool and he likes having some ability to influence the evolution of technology and society," Altman wrote on X in October 2025 in reply to a user who questioned what his motivations were if he doesn't stand to immediately profit of OpenAI goes public.

Instead, Altman owes his billionaire status to his investments, namely in Stripe, Reddit, and Helion, a nuclear fusion firm.

After Loopt, Altman founded a venture fund called Hydrazine Capital and raised $21 million, which included a large investment from venture capitalist Peter Thiel. Altman invested 75% of that money into YC companies and led Reddit's Series B fundraising round.

Along with his brothers Max and Jack, Altman launched a fund in 2020 called Apollo that is focused on funding "moonshot" companies. They're startups that are financially risky but could potentially pay off with a breakthrough development.

In 2021, Altman and cofounders Alex Blania and Max Novendstern launched a global cryptocurrency project called Worldcoin.

Altman has said that his investment strategy is to look for "somewhat broken companies."

"You can treat the warts on top, and because of the warts, the company will be hugely underpriced," he told The New Yorker in 2016.

Life outside of OpenAI

Altman married his partner, Oliver Mulherin, in January 2024. His husband is an Australian software engineer who previously worked at Meta, according to his LinkedIn profile.

A few weeks after Forbes declared Altman a billionaire, he and Mulherin signed the Giving Pledge, vowing to give away most of their fortune.

In February 2025, Altman announced the birth of his son on social media.

"i have never felt such love," Altman said in his post.

He and his husband are expecting their second child later this year.

Altman has found interesting — and expensive — ways to spend his free time.

In April 2024 (the same month he made Forbes' billionaire list), he was spotted in Napa, California, driving an ultra-rare Swedish supercar. The Koenigsegg Regera is seriously fast, able to go from zero to 250 miles per hour in less than 30 seconds. Only 80 of these cars are known to exist, and they can cost up to $4.65 million.

He once told two YC founders that he likes racing cars and had five, including two McLarens and an old Tesla, according to The New Yorker. He's said he likes racing cars and renting planes to fly all over California.

Separately, he told the founders of the startup Shypmate that, "I prep for survival," and warned of either a "lethal synthetic virus," AI attacking humans, or nuclear war. Altman is not alone in prepping for a potential doomsday.

"I try not to think about it too much," Altman told the founders in 2016. "But I have guns, gold, potassium iodide, antibiotics, batteries, water, gas masks from the Israeli Defense Force, and a big patch of land in Big Sur I can fly to."