Samuel Harris Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, recently got fired by the OpenAI’s Board. Besides that, he is an American investor and entrepreneur. The alumnus of Stanford University was previously the President of Y Combinator before getting fired by Paul Graham in 2019.
The tech world was shocked by Altman’s surprising firing from OpenAI. However, he was reportedly rehired for the same position. Some researchers suggest that his termination was backed by enormous money and huge egos.
Altman was born in a Jewish family in 1985 in Chicago, Illinois. He did not earn a bachelor’s degree because he dropped out in his first year at Stanford University in 2005. According to the OpenAI’s Board, Altman was not always candid while communicating with the Board.
Altman has made a huge contribution to technology, which makes him one of the top hundred influential people around the world, according to Time Magazine. The University of Waterloo honored him with an honorary Doctor of Engineering degree in 2017.
Sam Altman Partner
Sam Altman is openly gay. His partner is Oliver Mulherin, and they are planning to have kids together. Let us see how the couple balances their personal and professional lives. According to Altman’s confession to the New York Times, he lives with his boyfriend, Ollie, on Russian Hill in San Francisco.
The couple made their first public appearance at the White House when Mr. Narendra Modi, the Prime Minister of India, was invited in June 2023 for a state dinner. Tim Cook (Apple CEO) and Sundar Pichai (Google CEO) were also present.
Altman and Mulherin celebrate their weekends at a reconstructed house in Napa Valley, California. Altman co-founded Loopt, a location-based social networking app, with Nick Sivo in 2005 when the former was nineteen.
The duo dated for nine years and broke up after the Green Dot Corporation acquired it for $43.4 million. Thus, Altman is unmarried but not single. Moreover, he is a vegetarian and raises cows at his house in the Napa Valley.
Oliver Mulherin is a software engineer who has a bachelor’s degree from the University of Melbourne. He co-founded PROPL in Melbourne, Australia. Further, he worked as a Software Developer at the IOTA Foundation in Melbourne and a Software Engineer at SPARK Neuro, Broadwing, and Meta.
Sam Altman’s Journey In OpenAI
Adam D’Angelo, the CEO of Quora, is the only remaining board member, while Altman fired all other board members who sacked him last week. The previous board members were Ilya Sutskever, Helen Toner, and Tasha McCauley.
The new OpenAI board members are Bret Taylor, Larry Summers, and Adam D’Angelo. The company did not reveal the exact reasons for his firing, but reports suggest he was fired due to growing friction between him and the other board members.
Ilya Sutskever and some members felt Altman was not concerned enough regarding AI’s threat to society and was only focusing on growing his business. Meanwhile, Helen Toner wrote a research paper that allegedly criticized OpenAI’s approach to keeping its AI technologies safe while praising its rival company, Anthropic.
Thus, Altman tried to fire Toner but got fired instead because the other board members joined forces against him. On the other hand, some OpenAI employees came together and threatened to quit their jobs if they did not rehire Altman.
However, it was of no use. Finally, Altman was rehired through OpenAI’s minority owner, Microsoft, and he backfired those who sacked him.
Sam Altman’s Career
Altman co-founded Loopt in 2005 by raising over $30 million through venture capital. However, Green Dot Corporation, the largest prepaid debit card company, acquired the company for $43.4 million.
Altman joined Y Combinator as a part-time partner in 2011. Paul Graham, the co-founder, hired him as the President in 2014. Further, he became its Chairman of the Board but spent more time forming OpenAI. Finally, Graham fired him in 2020.
Altman left Y Combinator in 2019 for OpenAI, which was financially supported by Microsoft, Amazon Web Services, Elon Musk, Infosys, and more. On the other hand, Altman financially supports technology startups and nuclear energy organizations.
Altman met several famous personalities from twenty-two countries after the success of ChatGPT. Mina Murati was hired as the new CEO of OpenAI between the firing and rehiring of Altman.
