OpenAI CEO Sam Altman's Parents were Successful Professionals in Very Different Careers

The technology sector is often times a mystery to the average person. Helmed by people who often have multiple degrees in areas that most of us don't even understand, it's an industry that leads our world even as we scramble to understand its impact.

And leaders of the industry are often unknowns as well, at least by a majority of people. While celebrity CEOs like Elon Musk have some coverage in the public consciousness, others are more mysterious.

Then there are industry leaders like Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI and an artificial intelligence mover and shaker, who is helping to shape how humanity interacts with AI. Here's what we know about the parents who raised him.

Sam was born in Chicago and raised in St. Louis, according to The Jerusalem Post. He studied computer science at Stanford, but ended up dropping out of college at just 19 years old to co-found a local social networking app called Loopt.

But before he was dipping his toes into tech entrepreneurship, he was being raised by his parents: Jerry Altman and Connie Gibstine.

Business Insider reports that his parents had very different careers from their son, with his mom working as a dermatologist and his father working as a real estate broker.

While Jerry passed away in 2018, the outlet notes that before his death, he was involved in affordable housing and historic preservation efforts in St. Louis.

Sam has spoken openly about the difficulty of losing his father. Although he compared it to being fired from OpenAI, before they later re-hired him, Sam called his father's passing "much worse" to grapple with (via Business Insider).

In 2016, Connie once revealed that she has to occasionally deal with health anxiety from Sam, telling the New Yorker, "I have to reassure him that he doesn't have meningitis or lymphoma, that it's just stress."

Sam has two brothers, Jack and Max, and a sister, Annie, from whom he is estranged after she alleged he sexually harassed and abused her for years. Sam has denied these allegations.

Now that we know a little bit about his family, the next question might be: what is Sam's ethnicity?

According to an interview he gave with Time Magazine in 2023, Sam is Jewish.

In the interview, he specified the type of Jewish culture he grew up in, explaining, "I’m a Midwestern Jew," adding, "I think that fully explains my exact mental model, very optimistic and prepared for things to go super wrong at any point."

In the same interview, Sam went on to explain how he felt AI could contribute to the wellness of humanity and our potential as a species, rather than replace us.

The visionary AI-industry leader has big plans for his company and the future of AI in general. Many of those plans seem to be shaped and driven by the strong family values and connections he had when growing up.