ChatGPT creator Sam Altman faces abuse allegations — trouble keeps following tech billionaire

CEO of OpenAI, Sam Altman is yet again in hot water after his sister accused him of sexual abuse. In a lawsuit filed in Missouri, Ann Altman alleged that he regularly sexually abused her between 1997 and 2006. She claims that the abuse started when she was three and Altman was 12. The tech leader has denied the accusations in a joint statement with his mother and two brothers.

The accusations mark yet another low in Altman's life and career in the recent past. Altman attended Stanford University, where he studied computer science but he dropped out in 2004. At the young age of 19, Altman co-founded the company Loopt and became its CEO. Loopt offered a geo-social networking mobile application. The company raised more than $30 million in venture capital but it was shut down in 2012 after it failed to gain traction. It was subsequently purchased by Green Dot Corporation.

In 2011, Altman became a part-time partner at Y Combinator, a technology start-up accelerator. Y Combinator has helped 3,000 companies, such as Airbnb, Dropbox, DoorDash, Reddit, and Twitch grow. In 2014, Altman became the new president of the company, and in his first round of investments, he included his company Loopt.

He also started a new deal for startups, offering $150,000 for 7% equity, per Celebrity Net Worth. In 2015, Altman created YC Continuity, a $700 million growth-stage equity fund that invests in the companies of Y Combinator.

In 2016, Altman became the president of YC Group and later transitioned to the position of chairman so that he could focus more on his other company, OpenAI. Today, Altman is no longer associated with the company.

With Elon Musk and several other investors, Altman announced the establishment of OpenAI in December 2015. He pledged over $1 billion to its operation which included for-profit corporation OpenAI LP and the nonprofit OpenAI Inc., its parent company. OpenAI conducts research in the sphere of artificial intelligence to promote and develop friendly AI that will prove beneficial to all of humanity.

In 2020, OpenAI announced the creation of GPT-3,  a language model that automatically produces human-like text by assimilating trillions of words from the Internet and translating between different languages. In 2022, an AI model was launched as an AI chatbot called the ChatGPT. 

The product launch generated 100 million users in its first two months and brought in $17.9 billion in AI funding in Silicon Valley, according to Bloomberg. In 2023, OpenAI raised money from Microsoft in a private funding round which valued the company at $29 billion. Microsoft integrated ChatGPT into its Bing search results. This year, GPT-4 was launched. Altman has drawn criticism from the skeptics of AI. 

Previously in 2023, OpenAI sacked Sam Altman as the CEO of the company claiming the "board lost confidence in his ability to lead". Hours later, fellow co-founder Greg Brockman also announced his resignation, sending ripples through the tech world. OpenAI emphasized that Altman's departure came after a deliberate review process by the board, which concluded that he was not consistently candid in his communications with the board, which “hindered its ability to exercise its responsibilities", per reports.

Altman reacted to the decision and said it was a "weird experience" for him. He thanked his colleagues saying he had a great time working with talented people, and described his experience at the company as "transformative".

One day after Altman was sacked, the board got into discussions with him about bringing him back as the CEO, The Verge reported. Reportedly, there was pressure from the investors and executives to bring Altman back. Sam Altman also met the board to reportedly discuss his return. He also tweeted an image of himself holding the guest ID card.

However, The Information later reported that the discussions to bring Altman back had fallen apart Sunday. It further said that the former CEO of Amazon-owned streaming platform Twitch, Emmett Shear, will be the new interim CEO of OpenAI.

In a dramatic development, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella announced Monday that both Altman and his associate Greg Brockman will be joining Microsoft to lead a new advanced AI research team. Nadella also confirmed Emmett Shear's appointment as the new OpenAI CEO.

Days later, in a remarkable turn of events, Altman was reinstated as the CEO of OpenAI, and all but one board of directors of the company were replaced. Furthermore, a nonvoting observer seat was given to Microsoft Corp., its biggest investor. 

Since then, Altman has been trying to take OpenAI to new heights and now he faces a steep challenge in his pursuit of making it a for-profit organization. As of 2025, entrepreneur, programmer, investor and blogger, Altman has an estimated net worth of $1.1 billion, as per Forbes. Altman is best known as the co-founder and former CEO of the artificial intelligence research laboratory OpenAI, which is the parent creator of ChatGPT.