Sam Altman
CEO, OpenAI
ChatGPT, and the argument about what open means
Rating
94Impact score
Domains
AIStartupsCapital
Scouting report
Ran Y Combinator from 2014 to 2019, then OpenAI, where ChatGPT reached a hundred million users faster than any consumer product before it and forced every large technology company to reorganise around one technology. He was fired by his own board in November 2023 and reinstated five days later. The name is the permanent argument: frontier models closed, Whisper and gpt-oss open.
Curator’s note
The most consequential CEO in tech right now, and the one whose company name is a standing dispute.
Portrait
Painted from a photograph of Sam Altman by TechCrunch, licensed CC BY 2.0.
Sources
- 01Sam Altman en.wikipedia.org
- 02ChatGPT en.wikipedia.org
- 03Removal of Sam Altman from OpenAI en.wikipedia.org