Sam Altman is an American entrepreneur, investor, and programmer. He was born and raised in St. Louis, Missouri, and received his first computer at the age of eight. Altman attended John Burroughs School and dropped out of Stanford University after one year of studying computer science. He co-founded Loopt, a location-based social networking app, and served as its CEO. Altman is also the former president of Y Combinator, a startup accelerator, and is the current CEO of OpenAI, an artificial intelligence research laboratory. He has made angel investments in several successful companies, including Airbnb, Stripe, and Reddit. Altman has been recognized for his contributions to the tech industry, including being named one of the 100 most influential people in the world by Time magazine in 2023.