Sam Altman's Net Worth

Sam Altman is a prominent American entrepreneur, investor, and tech executive best known as the CEO of OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT. He began his career as the co-founder of the location-based app Loopt. After its acquisition, he rose to fame as the president of Y Combinator, one of Silicon Valley's most powerful startup incubators, where he helped fund and guide companies like Airbnb, Dropbox, and Reddit. Over the years, Altman has become one of the most influential voices in the tech world, with a net worth estimated to be in the hundreds of millions, largely driven by his stakes in successful startups and his leadership at OpenAI.
Aside from his business success, Altman is known for his philanthropic interests, including donations focused on education, global health, and AI safety. He has expressed a desire to ensure that artificial intelligence benefits all of humanity, not just the wealthy elite. While admired for his vision, Altman has also found himself compared to and occasionally in tension with other major tech figures such as Tesla CEO Elon Musk, a former OpenAI board member and current AI rival, and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, whose company is racing to develop its own AI products.

What is Sam Altman’s Net Worth?

As of June 2025, Sam Altman’s net worth is estimated to be $1.7 billion.

While he is the CEO of OpenAI, one of the key companies driving the $500 billion Stargate initiative focused on AI infrastructure, Altman does not actually own direct equity in OpenAI. Instead, his fortune comes from a wide range of tech investments made over the years. Despite his high-profile role, he earns a modest $76,000 salary and has often said his goals are mission-driven rather than financial.

Altman’s career began in 2005 when he co-founded Loopt at just 19 years old. Backed by Sequoia Capital and others, Loopt raised over $30 million. Although it struggled to scale, it was acquired by Green Dot Corporation for $43.4 million in 2012.

In 2011, Altman joined Y Combinator as a part-time partner and soon became a key force behind its growth. By 2014, he took over as president and made bold changes, including increasing startup funding to $150,000 for 7% equity. 

In 2015, Altman launched YC Continuity, a $700 million fund to support later-stage YC companies, and YC Research, a nonprofit branch focused on ambitious social projects like universal basic income and education reform.

Altman’s investment portfolio is extensive. He is one of Reddit’s largest shareholders with an 8.7% stake, which became even more valuable after Reddit went public in March 2024. He also holds investments in major companies, including Airbnb, Uber, Instacart, DoorDash, Asana, and the fintech giant Stripe, valued at $70 billion in late 2024. 

Though Altman has led OpenAI since 2019, he only has an indirect financial interest in the company through an early Y Combinator fund investment. He was originally the co-chair of OpenAI when it was founded in 2015 alongside Elon Musk. The company began as a nonprofit but introduced a capped for-profit arm in 2019. After a brief dismissal in November 2023, Altman returned to his role as CEO within a week.

Under his leadership, OpenAI has launched ChatGPT, one of the most widely used AI tools globally. The company was projected to earn $2.7 billion in revenue in 2024 and reached a valuation of $157 billion after raising $6.6 billion in a funding round in October 2024.

What Businesses Does Sam Altman Own or is a part of?

Sam Altman personally invested over $375 million into Helion Energy, making it one of the largest individual bets on nuclear fusion in history. 

The man behind ChatGPT is involved in many businesses as an investor, executive, or board member, mainly in the fields of technology and clean energy. Here is a look at the key companies he owns or is involved with:

• OpenAI: Sam Altman is the CEO and co-founder of OpenAI, one of the world’s leading artificial intelligence research organizations. He became CEO in 2019, taking over from Elon Musk and Ilya Sutskever. In this role, Altman is responsible for setting the company’s vision, growing its team, securing funding, and guiding the safe and ethical development of artificial general intelligence (AGI). Under his leadership, OpenAI launched groundbreaking models like GPT-3 and ChatGPT.. Although he does not hold direct equity in OpenAI, Altman draws a salary for his work. In late 2023, he was briefly removed from his position during internal board conflicts but returned just days later after strong support from employees and investors. As of 2024, OpenAI generated about $2.7 billion in revenue and was valued at around $157 billion. In May 2025, OpenAI made its largest acquisition to date by purchasing io, an AI hardware startup founded by former Apple designer Jony Ive, for $6.5 billion. The deal marks a major step in OpenAI’s expansion into hardware.
• Helion Energy: Sam Altman is the chairman and a major investor in Helion Energy, a nuclear fusion startup aiming to make commercial fusion power a reality. He has personally invested $375 million in the company, calling it “by far the most promising approach to fusion” he has seen. Helion is working toward delivering clean, sustainable energy, and in a major step forward, it signed a power purchase agreement with Microsoft, also a key investor in OpenAI, to supply electricity from a fusion plant as early as 2028.
• Oklo Inc.: Sam Altman served as chairman of Oklo Inc., a nuclear fission startup focused on building advanced reactors for clean and efficient energy. In 2024, Oklo went public through a merger with Altman’s special-purpose acquisition company, AltC Acquisition Corp. He stepped down as chairman in April 2025 to avoid any potential conflicts of interest with his role at OpenAI but continues to maintain close ties with the company.
• AltC Acquisition Corp.: AltC Acquisition Corp. is a Special Purpose Acquisition Company (SPAC) co-founded by Sam Altman and investor Michael Klein in 2021. Its goal is to acquire or merge with a private company and help take it public. AltC raised about $500 million during its IPO in July 2021. In July 2023, AltC announced a merger with Oklo Inc., a nuclear fission startup where Altman also served as chairman. The deal valued Oklo at $850 million, and the merged company went public in May 2024 under the ticker OKLO on the New York Stock Exchange.
• Stargate LLC: Stargate LLC is a large-scale AI infrastructure venture co-founded by Sam Altman and Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison in January 2025. The joint initiative brings together OpenAI, SoftBank, Oracle, and investment firm MGX to build a global network of AI-ready data centers. The project plans to invest up to $500 billion by 2029, with an initial $100 billion deployment, aiming to support OpenAI’s growing AI workloads and rival cloud giants like AWS. OpenAI holds operational control with approximately 40% stake, and Altman leads its technical direction. The first facility, known as "Stargate 1," is currently under construction in Abilene, Texas. Despite its scale, the project has drawn skepticism over funding, including public criticism from Elon Musk.
• Tools for Humanity: Tools for Humanity is the company behind World (formerly Worldcoin), co-founded by Sam Altman, Max Novendstern, and Alex Blania in 2019. The project aims to create a global proof-of-personhood system using the Orb, a device that scans users’ irises to issue a World ID, a blockchain-based identity confirming the user is human. Verified users receive the WLD token. The company raised $115 million in Series C funding in 2023 from top firms like Andreessen Horowitz and Blockchain Capital. Over 12 million people in 100+ countries have been verified. In the U.S., 7,500 Orbs have been deployed in partnership with companies like Visa and Stripe. Altman is Chairman and actively guides the project’s direction, focusing on digital identity and AI fraud prevention.
• Y Combinator: Before leading OpenAI, Sam Altman was president of Y Combinator from 2014 to 2019. Y Combinator is a well-known startup accelerator that helped launch companies like Airbnb, Stripe, and Reddit. Under Altman’s leadership, YC grew its influence and became a major force in the tech world. The role also gave him valuable experience in early-stage investing and building successful startups.
• Hydrazine Capital: Sam Altman co-founded Hydrazine Capital with his brother Jack Altman in 2012. The early-stage venture capital firm invests in a wide range of sectors, including life sciences, big data, and specialty foods. Hydrazine is known for backing bold and innovative startups in their early growth stages.
• Apollo Projects: Alongside Jack and Max Altman, Sam also leads Apollo Projects, a venture firm focused on high-impact, early-stage companies. Apollo specializes in funding ambitious “moonshot” ideas, startups with the potential to transform industries and drive major change in society.
• Major Equity Investments: Altman has built an extensive investment portfolio through his personal venture firms, Hydrazine Capital and Apollo Projects, as well as through Y Combinator and OpenAI’s Startup Fund. As of mid-2024, he holds stakes in over 400 companies, with the portfolio valued at approximately $2.8 billion. His major investments include $180 million in Retro Biosciences (anti-aging biotech) and leading a $200 million Series B in Hermeus (hypersonic aviation). He has also backed Humane, the maker of the AI Pin, and Neuralink, Elon Musk’s brain-interface startup. Altman was an early investor in Reddit, holding 8.7% pre-IPO and serving on its board until 2022. He also played key roles in funding Asana, Stripe, Airbnb, Instacart, Uber, and DoorDash, along with dozens of other startups in biotech, fintech, AI, and clean tech.

What Brands Does Sam Altman Endorse?

Sam Altman publicly endorsed the AI-powered crib brand Cradlewise for his newborn, calling it one of the few baby products he genuinely found essential.

The OpenAI CEO has publicly endorsed a few notable companies, although not official partnerships, his support carries significant weight given his role in the tech world. Let’s take a look at them:

• Cradlewise: Sam Altman publicly endorsed the Cradlewise smart crib, created by Bengaluru-based startup Cradlewise. In a post on X, he listed it among his most useful baby products, saying, “We bought a lot of silly baby things that we haven't needed, but definitely I recommend a Cradlewise crib and a lot more burp rags than you think you could possibly need.”
• Slack: While not an official endorsement, Sam shared in a podcast with Microsoft Co-Founder Bill Gates that Slack is his favorite and most-used app, more than even ChatGPT. He said, “I use Slack way more than email. The only thing that I was thinking was possibly iMessages. But yes, more than that.”
• AMD: In June 2025, Altman publicly endorsed AMD’s upcoming data center GPU, the Instinct MI450, during the company’s Advancing AI keynote. He praised its memory architecture and potential for powering AI inference and training workloads. As OpenAI’s CEO, his support gave AMD a major boost, positioning the MI450 as a strong rival to Nvidia’s AI chips. AMD CEO Lisa Su also confirmed that OpenAI was an early design partner for the chip, with Altman providing key input during development.

Assets and Lifestyle of Sam Altman

Sam Altman’s Real Estate Portfolio

The 40-year-old entrepreneur’s real estate portfolio is valued at approximately $124 million and includes a mix of luxury homes, private retreats, and large-scale estates. Let’s take a look at them:

• Russian Hill Compound: In San Francisco’s Russian Hill neighborhood, Sam Altman owns a luxury compound centered around a $27 million mansion at 950 Lombard Street, purchased in March 2020 through an LLC. The property features a wellness center, infinity pool, underground garage with a car turntable, and stunning bay views. However, it is currently at the center of a lawsuit over construction issues, including sewage leaks and waterproofing failures, with repair costs estimated at over $4 million. In January 2025, Altman expanded the compound by purchasing three nearby properties, 855 Chestnut Street and 952 & 954 Lombard Street, for about $38.5 million through Amberley Properties LLC, managed by his cousin Jennifer Serralta.
• Napa Valley Ranch: In late 2020, Sam purchased a 950-acre working ranch in Napa Valley for $15.7 million through an LLC. The property includes five residences, vineyards, cattle operations, and natural wildlife like river otters living among century-old oaks. Described as both “folksy and contemporary,” the ranch serves as a weekend retreat for Altman and his husband, where they often host friends, colleagues, and fellow tech leaders.
• Hawaii Estate: In July 2021, Altman purchased a 12-bedroom oceanfront estate in Kailua-Kona for around $43 million, held through the Sam Altman Qualified Opportunity Fund. Located next to a reconstructed royal temple of King Kamehameha I, the property features guesthouses, a tennis court, and a swimming pool, offering a private and historic retreat setting.
• Big Sur Property: Since at least 2016, Sam Altman has owned a remote coastal property in Big Sur, often described as a private retreat. He has referred to it as a place he could escape to in the event of a global crisis. The land, which he once called a “big patch,” is reachable by small plane and reflects his interest in long-term survival planning.

Vehicles Owned By Sam Altman Over The Years

Sam Altman is a passionate car enthusiast with a notable collection. Here’s a look at some of the standout vehicles he owns:

• Koenigsegg Regera: Altman was spotted driving a white Koenigsegg Regera in Napa, California, a rare Swedish hypercar with only 80 units ever produced. The car, identified as unit No. 7232, quickly caught the attention of onlookers and car enthusiasts. The sighting went viral online, with fans praising both his taste in cars and his role in creating ChatGPT. One popular comment read, “This man helped me pass chem, enjoy that Regera.”
• McLaren F1: Sam Altman owns two McLaren F1s, including a rare and striking red model. In a recent sighting in West Marin, he was seen at a gas station warmly engaging with a father and son, allowing them to admire the car up close. The McLaren F1 is one of the most iconic supercars ever made, and other notable owners include Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison, musician Wyclef Jean, and fashion designer Ralph Lauren.
• Tesla (Roadster & Model S): Sam owns a first-generation Tesla Roadster, now considered a collector’s item, along with a 2013 Tesla Model S. He once joked that taking UberX rides in San Francisco is cheaper than driving his Roadster.

In addition to his hypercars, Sam Altman is also reported to own a Lexus LFA, though less is known about it.

What's Next For Sam Altman?

Sam Altman is leading the development of a new AI companion device, co-designed with former Apple designer Jony Ive and powered by OpenAI. Set to launch in 2026, the device aims to move beyond traditional screens and offer a more immersive AI experience. He also expects AI agents to become common in workplaces this year, changing how businesses operate. At the same time, he is expanding Stargate LLC, a major project building AI-ready data centers around the world. Under his leadership, OpenAI is growing its presence in Europe with a new office in Munich and forming new partnerships across Asia. The company also secured a $200 million U.S. military contract to build AI tools for defense. Altman continues to focus on building toward artificial general intelligence (AGI), hiring top talent in AI hardware and chips to shape the future of computing.

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