In 2015, Sam Altman, along with Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla, and a group of other venture capitalists, co-founded OpenAI. The company started as a non-profit research center and organization dedicated to the development of artificial intelligence.
Initially funded with a billion dollars, OpenAI faced resource shortages, leading to the creation of a for-profit arm to address gaps and secure necessary funding for the research center. The for-profit section of OpenAI entered into a partnership with Microsoft, receiving a billion-dollar investment from Microsoft and other investors, while Microsoft and other funders collectively held 49%, and OpenAI itself retained 49%.
The six co-founders of OpenAI were Sam Altman, Ilya Sutskever, Greg Brockman, Elon Musk, John Schulman, and Wojciech Zaremba. Funding came from Peter Thiel, Amazon Web Services, and Microsoft.
One of OpenAI’s notable inventions was the chatbot GPT (Generative Pre-trained Transformer), which gained wide recognition for Altman and the company.
In 2023, the board of OpenAI decided to remove Altman as CEO, and the reasons for his dismissal remain unclear. Two days after his departure, Microsoft announced that Altman would join their team.
Despite the board’s decision, Altman was highly regarded by OpenAI’s employees. Approximately 700 out of 750 employees threatened to collectively resign if Altman did not return. Shortly thereafter, the company announced Altman’s reinstatement as CEO.
Altman also briefly served as the CEO of Reddit for eight days following the resignation of the previous CEO.
In addition to his roles in the tech industry, Altman engaged in numerous charitable activities. During the COVID-19 pandemic, he co-founded the C19 Coalition project, aimed at enhancing clinical trials to study and evaluate the effectiveness of medical treatments, in collaboration with the clinical trials company TrialSpark. Later, he received an honorary doctorate in engineering from the University of Waterloo in 2017.
Recognized as one of Time magazine’s 100 most influential people and one of Forbes’ top CEOs, Sam Altman has emerged as a shining and influential figure amidst the ongoing revolution in technology and innovation. His impact on the entrepreneurial and technological landscape has been significant.
Leave a Reply