Sam Altman turns 40 today (April 22), and entering middle age is not a quiet retreat, but at the pinnacle of global influence. Altman’s career follows a familiar Silicon Valley arc: a gifted young coder, a college dropout and an early entrepreneur. But it wasn’t until he turned Openai from an obscure nonprofit to a $300 billion technology power that Altman really became a household name. In the Chatgpt era, Altman not only built products, but also shaped the conditions for our future.
We don’t know how Altman spends his day, although it may be a low-key thing. Altman and his husband welcomed a baby two months ago, which could mean more lullabies tonight than the headlines. Still, the 40 is a notable milestone for those who have thought over the past few decades.
This is a moment to review the way Sam Altman brought from Teenage Hacker to one of the most striking figures in the technology.
2005-2014: From founders to investors
After quitting Stanford as a sophomore, Sam Altman formed his first company, Loopt, a location-sharing app that allows users to broadcast their whereabouts to friends. It was one of the earliest startups funded by Y Combinator (YC) and was a fledgling startup incubator at the time. After he participated in the accelerator program, Altman approached YC. In 2011, he joined the incubator as a part-time partner.
Loopt deals with operators like Sprint in 2012, but the app failed to attract users. That year, it was acquired by Green Dot for $43 million. Altman used the moment to invest and co-founded a venture capital firm called hildazine Capital with his brother Max Altman.
In 2014, YC founders Paul Graham and Jessica Livingston hired Altman to replace Graham as president, and Altman accepted it. Under his leadership, YC has consolidated its reputation as the world’s leading startup incubator.
2015-2022: Openai’s quiet rise
In 2015, Altman co-founded Openai with his then friend and collaborator Elon Musk, and now it is more of a competitor. The organization was founded with $1 billion in guaranteed funding from Altman, Musk, Peter Thiel, Amazon Web Services, etc.
Altman and Musk initially served as co-chairs. But in 2018, Musk withdrew after Altman refused to take over the company’s leadership. His departure and loss of financial support – was in a vulnerable position. In response, the organization created a for-profit subsidiary in 2019 to fund its research, while control remains in the original nonprofit committee.
That same year, the new for-profit organization established a key partnership with Microsoft, which provided cloud services through Azure and began integrating Openai’s models into its products. Ultraman also resigned as president of the Y portfolio and focused on full-time Openai. During its five-year term, YC helped form nearly 1,900 companies, including Airbnb, Doordash, Instacart, Reddit and Twitch.
2022: Chatgpt era
The Chatgpt release in November 2022 marked a turning point, leaping AI into mainstream awareness. Chatbots are able to generate the ability to produce fast, coherent, and often amazing human responses that dazzle users. Within a few days, more than a million people signed it, and in the following months, ChatpPT became a household name.
The company’s new discovery brings higher scrutiny. In November 2023, Openai’s board of directors suddenly fired Altman on the grounds that his communications lacked candidity. The move sparked immediate opposition: employees threatened to go out, Microsoft expanded Altman’s job opportunities, and board member Ilya Sutskever publicly retreated from his support for the strike. Within five days, the board was reorganized and Altman was restored to CEO.
Less than a month after The Dramatic Change, Time magazine called it “CEO of the Year” and called him “one of the most powerful and respected executives in the world, the public face and leader in the face of the technological revolution.”
Ultraman’s personal life
In January 2024, Altman married Australian software engineer Oliver Mulherin. photo Small beach weddings circulate online. The couple went first The public has a relationship with them after appearing together at the White House State Dinner in June 2023.
On February 22, 2025, Altman announced on X that he and Mulherin welcomed their first child. Their son Altman chose not to share, who was born in the “early stage” and spent some time in the neonatal intensive care unit. “I’ve never felt love like this,” Ultraman wrote on a social media platform owned by Musk.
