Altman, Sam (1985-…), is an American investor and entrepreneur (business developer). He is the chief executive officer (CEO) of OpenAI, a company that develops artificial intelligence (AI) products. OpenAI created ChatGPT, a chatbot that can converse on a wide variety of topics with its users. 
Samuel Harris Altman was born on April 22, 1985. He grew up near St. Louis, Missouri. In high school, he came out as gay in a speech protesting intolerance. Altman studied computer science at Stanford University for two years before dropping out in 2005 to develop a mobile app with friends. The app, Loopt, enabled people to share their location with friends before smartphones were common. Loopt received funding from Y Combinator, a business that helps startups, or new companies. Loopt did not become popular, and Altman sold the company in 2012.
After selling Loopt, Altman invested money into other startups. In 2014, Altman became the president of Y Combinator. In that position, he worked to assist ambitious technology startups.
In late 2015, Altman, the entrepreneur Elon Musk, and others founded the company OpenAI, hiring prominent researchers of artificial intelligence. As a nonprofit research company, OpenAI aimed to develop AI for the benefit of humanity. The company focuses its efforts on deep learning, where a program uses multiple interconnected “layers” of representations. The program learns complicated concepts by developing them from layers of simpler concepts.
In 2018, Elon Musk left OpenAI, citing a conflict of interest with his electric technology company Tesla. The next year, Altman left Y Combinator and became the CEO of OpenAI. The company received a large investment from Microsoft Corporation, a major technology company, and began to develop for-profit products. In 2022, OpenAI released DALL-E—an AI program that could produce new images—and the chatbot ChatGPT.
In November 2023, the board of OpenAI voted to remove Altman as CEO, citing concerns including poor communication. The board quickly reinstated him after most of OpenAI’s employees threatened to join Altman in moving to Microsoft.
