- General
- March 9, 2019
- 4 minutes read
Y Combinator President Sam Altman Steps Down
Y Combinator chairman Sam Altman Photo by Steve Jennings/Getty Images for TechCrunch Y Combinator – the Silicon Valley based startup…
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| Y Combinator chairman Sam Altman
Photo by Steve Jennings/Getty Images for TechCrunch
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Y Combinator – the Silicon Valley based startup incubator known for successful alumni like Airbnb, Dropbox, Stripe, GM Cruise, Coinbase, Machine Zone, Instacart, DoorDash and Zenefits, just to name a few – has announced that its president Sam Altman would be stepping down from that role to focus on OpenAI, the non-profit artificial intelligence research firm funded by notable names like Elon Musk, Reid Hoffman, Peter Thiel and Y Combinator co-founder Jessica Livingston.
Y Combinator has also announced that it’s planning to relocate its headquarters to the city of San Francisco – from Mountain View, California, citing a “logistical tradeoff” and wanting to be closer to its Bay Area alumni. The current market capitalization of YC companies now stands at around $150 billion, with over 4,000 alumni and 1,900 companies.
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| Y Combinator co-founder and former president Paul Graham (left)
Photo by Charles Eshelman/Getty Images for AOL
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Starting as a YC part-time partner in 2011, Sam Altman took over as president of Y Combinator – from co-founder Paul Graham – in 2014. He notably participated in the first YC badge with Loopt, a location-based social networking app that sold to Green Dot for $43 million in 2012. He is a personal investor in many companies, including Asana, Pinterest, Optimizely, Zenefits, Reddit, Stripe, Soylent and Change.org.
Altman will now serve as chairman of the startup incubator. YC says there’ll be “no significant operational change” due to his step-down, because the incubator is run as a partnership.
