The road to success is often paved in failure.
Before billionaire Sam Altman was making waves — for the good and bad — as founder of ChatGPT parent-company OpenAI and one of the many leaders of the AI revolution, he built quite a name for himself in the world of big tech.
Watch the video above to hear how his first big venture and its subsequent failure launched him on the path to disrupting the future.
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FULL VIDEO TRANSCRIPT:
You’ve probably heard of Sam Altman, the billionaire CEO of OpenAI.
OpenAI is the parent company of ChatGPT, which has quickly become one of the most known names in artificial intelligence.
But there’s a lot more to Altman than the AI chatbots.
Altman has been making waves in big tech since he was a teenager.
At 19, he launched Loopt, a social media site that pioneered real-time location sharing.
It allowed users to update their friends back in 2005.
Loopt would go on to partner with most major phone carriers including Verizon, Sprint and AT&T.
It never built the massive user bases of Twitter and Facebook, but it may have simply been ahead of its time.
That failure was really just the beginning for Altman.
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After Loopt was acquired by GreenDot Capital in 2012, Altman used some of his profits to essentially become a founder of the modern internet.
His work at startup accelerator Y Combinator bankrolled Reddit, Stripe and Airbnb.
All companies that redefined how we interact, pay and travel.
Along with other tech leaders, Altman became fearful of Google’s increasing dominance in the emerging field of AI, and used his business savvy and tech expertise to launch OpenAI.
While OpenAI initially struggled with funding, organization and even its central purpose; it ultimately went on to launch ChatGPT and the AI arms race that now dominates big tech.
Altman was also catapulted into the public spotlight…for the good and the bad.
Some, including Elon Musk, have claimed Altman abandoned the principle of openness that founded OpenAI in favor of chasing profits.
Altman made headlines in 2023 when OpenAI’s board voted to fire him for a “lack of candor” and hindering the company’s governance.
He denied the claim, OpenAI’s staff threatened to quit, and Altman was ultimately reinstated as CEO.
So calling Altman a hero or a villain may be a matter of perspective, but there’s no denying his status as a disruptor.
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