Sam Altman's IQ Score: No Verified Test

Sam Altman has no documented IQ score and no single figure circulates consistently. A track record of spotting founders and raising capital is evidence of judgement, not a psychometric result.

Chicago → St. Louis, 1985–2003

An eight-year-old taking apart a Mac

Born in Chicago on 22 April 1985, the eldest of four, and raised in St. Louis by a dermatologist mother and a real-estate-broker father. At eight he got an Apple Macintosh LC II and learned to program and take it apart.

He has said the internet was how he found other gay people in the Midwest in the 1990s. As a student he came out, and pushed back publicly when classmates objected to a school assembly on sexuality.

Eldest of four children; his siblings Jack and Max later became founders and investors too.

His age when he got his first computer.

1990s

Online chat rooms, he has said, were a lifeline growing up gay in the Midwest.

Education: finished vs unfinished

✓Completed

2003

John Burroughs School, St. Louis

A private college-prep day school. Graduated and went straight to Stanford.

½Left after two years

2003–2005

Stanford University, computer science

Worked in Stanford's AI lab and played a lot of poker, which he later credited with teaching him to read people and make decisions with incomplete information.

Left in 2005 to join the first-ever Y Combinator batch with Loopt. No degree; the University of Waterloo later gave him an honorary doctorate.

Five days in November 2023

OpenAI's board fired him on a Friday; he was back as CEO by the next Wednesday. Step through it.

Fired

The board says he was “not consistently candid”

In a short video call, OpenAI's board removed him as CEO and from the board. CTO Mira Murati was named interim CEO; president Greg Brockman quit the same day.

Every company, every role

YEARSENTITYROLEWHAT HAPPENED

2005–12LooptCo-founder, CEOLocation-sharing app for phones from YC's first batch. Backed by Sequoia and other venture firms; sold to Green Dot in 2012 for about $43M.

2012Hydrazine CapitalCo-founderVenture fund started with his brother Jack, backing mostly YC companies.

2014–19Y CombinatorPresidentSucceeded Paul Graham; expanded into YC Research, larger batches and later-stage investing.

2015 →OpenAICo-founder; CEO from 2019Started as a nonprofit lab; he created the capped-profit arm, struck the Microsoft partnership and launched ChatGPT on 30 November 2022.

2019 →World (Worldcoin)Co-founderIris-scanning “proof of personhood” and a crypto token; has faced regulatory challenges in several countries.

2015 →Helion EnergyChairman, investorFusion-power start-up; signed a deal in 2023 to supply Microsoft with electricity from 2028.

2015–25OkloChairmanSmall nuclear fission reactors; he stepped down as chair in 2025.