ref/sam-altman log --chronological
Timeline
Twenty dated beats — childhood, startups, Y Combinator, OpenAI, and the crises — with uncertainty labeled where it exists.
1985-04-22
Born in Chicago
Samuel Harris Altman is born in Chicago, Illinois, and raised in St. Louis, Missouri. Mother a dermatologist, father a real-estate broker.
1993
First computer at age eight
Altman later says he received an Apple Macintosh at eight and taught himself to program — the origin story he returns to in interviews.
2003
Enters Stanford
Enrolls at Stanford University to study computer science.
2005
Drops out; founds Loopt; joins YC’s first batch
Leaves Stanford after two years to co-found Loopt, a location-based mobile social network, with Nick Sivo and Alok Deshpande. Loopt is funded in Y Combinator’s inaugural summer 2005 batch.
2011
Part-time partner at Y Combinator
Begins investing full-time; joins Y Combinator as a part-time partner while making early angel investments (Airbnb, Stripe, Reddit).
2012-03
Loopt sells to Green Dot for $43.4M
Green Dot Corporation acquires Loopt for $43.4 million. Altman is 26.
2014-02
Becomes president of Y Combinator
Succeeds Paul Graham as president of Y Combinator at 28.
2015-12
Co-founds OpenAI
OpenAI launches as a nonprofit AI research lab, co-founded by Altman, Elon Musk, Greg Brockman, Ilya Sutskever, John Schulman, Wojciech Zaremba and others, with a reported $1 billion pledge.
2017
Publishes “The Merge”
Altman’s essay argues humans and AI will merge — brain-computer interfaces and gradual integration rather than a sudden takeover.
2019-03
Leaves YC; becomes OpenAI CEO; capped-profit created
Steps down from Y Combinator to run OpenAI full-time; becomes CEO; OpenAI creates the capped-profit OpenAI LP structure.
2019-07
Microsoft invests $1 billion
Microsoft announces a $1 billion investment in OpenAI and an exclusive cloud-computing partnership.
2020-06
GPT-3 released
OpenAI releases GPT-3 via API — 175 billion parameters — demonstrating few-shot learning and igniting commercial LLM interest.
2021
“Moore’s Law for Everything”; Helion bet
Publishes the essay “Moore’s Law for Everything”; leads a $375 million round into fusion startup Helion Energy.
2022-11-30
ChatGPT launches
OpenAI releases ChatGPT, which reaches an estimated 100 million users within two months — among the fastest consumer-tech adoptions on record.
2023-03
GPT-4 released
OpenAI releases GPT-4, a multimodal model, alongside growing public debate about AI risk.
2023-05-16
Testifies before the U.S. Senate
Appears before the Senate Judiciary subcommittee on AI oversight, calling for government regulation of powerful AI systems. See Senate Testimony.
2023-07
Worldcoin launches
Tools for Humanity launches the Worldcoin token and Orb-based identity network Altman co-founded. See Worldcoin.
2023-11-17 → 2023-11-22
Fired and reinstated in five days
The OpenAI nonprofit board removes Altman as CEO on Nov 17; after an employee letter signed by most of the staff and investor pressure, he is reinstated Nov 22 with a new board. See The Board Crisis.
2024-09-23
Publishes “The Intelligence Age”
Altman’s essay argues AI will drive a new era of prosperity — “the Intelligence Age” — while acknowledging risks.
2025-01
“Reflections”; Stargate announced
Publishes “Reflections” (“We are now confident we know how to build AGI as we have traditionally understood it”); the $500 billion Stargate U.S. AI-infrastructure venture is announced with OpenAI, SoftBank, Oracle and others.
Source notes
- Dates follow contemporary reporting and company announcements; see Sources.
- The November 2023 crisis entry compresses a contested episode — the full multi-perspective account is on The Board Crisis.
- “Fastest adoption” claims about ChatGPT rest on third-party estimates (e.g., UBS analysis, Feb 2023), not OpenAI’s own audited figures — flagged as estimates.