Sam Altman has succeeded in turning his ambitious investments into a significant portfolio worth more than $500 million. Since 2014 Altman, who is now 38, was the president of Y Combinator, and he has most recently been running OpenAI, the renowned artificial intelligence firm which he cofounded alongside Elon Musk in 2015. The venture capitalist’s active role in Y Combinator has allowed him to invest in numerous early-stage companies that have gone on to succeed. Altman shows no signs of slowing down as he has funded nearly 100 companies according to Crunchbase.
Altman owns stakes in 12 companies that have raised more than $50 million in fundraising rounds. This includes Helion Energy, a nuclear fusion energy provider which Altman invested $375 million in during their series E round, valuing the startup at $2.5 billion. The OpenAI CEO also invested in Neuralink, Elon Musk’s brain implant startup, in a $205 million series C round. Reddit, which Altman was a board member from 2014 to January 2022, was also given a large investment of $50 million during its series B round in 2014 by Altman-era Y Combinator.Altman has even ventured into supersonic aviation through Hermeus, the company that has recently raised $100 million in series B.
The OpenAI CEO has contributed to the success of numerous startups across sectors such as fintech, biotech, and software and hardware. These companies include Wave mobile money, a fintech African app developer, Retro Biosciences, a San Francisco-based Biotech, Trial Spark, a New York-based biotech, Humane, a software and hardware platform, Alt, a sports card trading platform, Asana, a productivity management platform, Aspen Neuroscience, a San Diego-based biotech, and Rescale, a cloud software.
For persons aspiring to follow in Altman’s footsteps, it is evident that the greatest rewards come from stepping our of one’s comfort zone and taking risks in industries outside of the ordinary. Altman has proven that investing in innovative products such as Brain-computer interface or cellular reprogramming can lead to massive returns.
