Sam's Vision for Future Tech?

How Silicon Valley Investor Mastermind Is Shaping The Future

Some ideas for your new investments or need to know what trends to follow?

You might want to watch what Sam Altman is doing.

With his net worth estimated between $250 - $500 million, he has evolved to a Silicon Valley heavyweight with an interesting back story. Kickstarted his career as the president of famous technology startup accelerator Y Combinator. Yes, that’s the company known for investments in almost 3,000 companies with a combined valuation of over $300 billion.

Sam Altman was born in 1985 in Chicago and grew up in St. Louis, Missouri, right across the Mississippi River from my father’s hometown, East St. Louis. He founded “Loopt” in 2005, at the age of 19. A geo-social networking app for location sharing and connecting people. Though raising $30 million, the company went bust and was eventually sold in 2012.

In 2011 he started at Y Combinator, the startup accelerator with a stellar unicorn track record, and became its president in 2014. Already at Y Combinator he founded a non-profit research lab focusing on education, basic income, urban development, future of computing… a telltale sign for his own future?

In 2015, he started OpenAI together with a number of investors, namely Elon Musk. The rest is history. Just one detail: In the aftermath of Microsoft’s second investment round of $10 billion this year, after already injecting $1 billion in 2019 and boosting OpenAI’s valuation to a staggering $29 billion – it was revealed that Altman had no equity in OpenAI. A puzzling detail during a congressional hearing in May 2023, but likely linked to his other investments that seemed to already satisfy his complex portfolio.

Asana, Reddit, Helion Energy, Instacart, Patreon, Lattice. Also invested in Airbnb, Uber, and Stripe in very early days. Qualtrics, Atlassian. The list reads as the who-is-who in Silicon Valley high-tech and digital economy. And the lines between Y Combinator and his own, personal investments begin to blur.

A quick look into Crunchbase shows Altman is invested in over 96 startups. Pitchbook lists him with 140 investments, 82 in his active portfolio and 33 exits. Apart from a few odd commitments, he seems to mainly focus on life-sciences and extending our lifespans as well as the future of limitless energy. Two future disruptors for society nonetheless, and sprinkled with some surprising activities.

A deeper look into a few selected hIghlights:

Energy

Helion Energy: a nuclear fusion company. Injected $375 million in 2021 at a valuation of $2.5 billion. Launch roadmap by 2028 with the first customer Microsoft, to secure MSFT’s path to carbon neutrality by 2030. This fusion reactor is set to use deuterium, a special form of hydrogen found in water. Just one cup of its liquid form “D20” (as in H2O for regular water), as Helion states, will replace 1 million gallons of oil or 10 million pounds of coal.

Oklo: developing nuclear fission micro-reactors, a miniaturized and modernized version of our current nuclear power plants. Investment amount undisclosed. Company valuation is currently at $850 million. It will go public via merger with AltC Acquisition Corp by 2024, a SPAC co-founded by Altman. SPACs are “special purpose acquisition companies” used as a shell to help raise capital. The merger is supposed to raise $500 million. Altman believes that nuclear fission micro-reactors will be an important transitional energy tech until nuclear fusion will be viable – and even possibly co-exist with fusion reactors and renewable energy sources in the future.

Web3 & FinTech

Alt: sports trading cards as NFTs? The company Alt is not a no-name, and not related to Sam’s last name either. Having raised in 2021 a total of $31 million in their Series A, and another $75 million in Series B, when Sam Altman chipped in, Alt boasts not only a wide variety of minted top-line NBA, NFL to MLB stars but is also an integrated trading and pricing market place developing additional VAS such as lending.

Coalition: a cyber insurance company, branded as an “active insurer” as it combines insurance policies with a platform of diverse cyber security tools and solutions for SMBs. Insurances are backed by Swiss Re and Argo Group.

Meanwhile: Another insurance company, a bitcoin-based life insurer, has just raised $19 million at a $100 million valuation. The sum was raised in two seed rounds, the first co-lead by Sam Altman, the second by Google VC’s fund Gradient Ventures.

Worldcoin: an ambitious global ID project aimed at the world’s population with an iris-scanned individual identity token, connected cryptocurrency account, and a global transaction app. It just raised $155 million in their series C round in May – after raising $100 million over a year ago already at a $3 billion valuation. A promising Web3/blockchain proposition amidst the current disillusioning?

Wave: Senegal-based money provider, one of Africa’s most promising FinTech unicorns, raised $200 million with Altman on board, together with Sequoia Capital, Stripe, and others. I mentioned them in a post last year on Afrofuturism and Africa’s startup ecosystem.

Health & Life-Science

Aspen Neuroscience: personalized cell-therapy, AI-based cell testing and analysis, focused on Parkinson treatment. Altman plugged $70 million in their 2021 Series A together with five other investors led by OrbiMed. Series B closed another $147 million in 2022, this time with Google and others in the lead, a lot of new investors, and only part of the Series A team.

Retro Biosciences: $180 million by Altman. Rejuvenating technology to slow down the aging process by – simplified – diluting blood plasma with salt water and albumin, at least in lab test series with mice and hopefully future options for humans. Goal is to “add 10 years to the human lifespan” (Retro), which in itself is an attractive proposition catering to the potentially multi-trillion dollar life-science market.

Detect: undisclosed investment amount. The company’s proposition, kicked off by the PCR-testing processes during the COVID pandemics, promises to bring top-level lab quality health testing to the home, including account management and connecting patients with their physicians. Especially with sensitive health issues.

Exponential Tech

Neuralink: the famous Elon Musk brain-implant company. Jumped on board during their Series C in 2021 when it raised another $205 million. This brain-silicon-chip venture with an integrated fully-autonomous surgery pod has made the news over the last few years with promising results – and not without ethical scrutiny. Though we may see a breakthrough in brain-machine interfaces and a multitude of surgical therapies soon.

Rain Neuromorphic: backed by Altman and raised $25 million in 2022. It’s focus is the intricate chip design that mimicks brain cells and how they compute. Neuromorphic computing is one of three main pillars for AI hardware-acceleration designs together with vector-based (led by Nvidia) and TPU (Google).

Cerebras Systems: another AI hardware-accelerator, this time directly competing with Nvidia and Intel with their “Wafer-Scale Engine” boasting 2.6 trillion transistors per plate-sized chip, and powering the “world’s fastest AI supercomputer” (Wired), the Condor Galaxy 1, in Santa Clara, California. They have raised $730 million with a $4.25 billion valuation in their last round in 2021 with Sam Altman listed as an investor. Though UpMarket has them currently at $2.76 billion.

Humane: With the former Apple managers Imran Chaudhri and Bethany Bongiorno, Humane focuses on providing an AI assistant with a wearable gadget, that can be clipped on to your collar or blouse. When you raise your hand a small laser projector will beam and light up information onto the palm of your hand. It wants to get people off of mobile screens and used to conversational interaction. And is additionally backed by an impressive line-up of corporate VC funds from Volvo, Microsoft to LG and others, in total raising $230 million until now. From 2020 to March 2023, Altman was involved in all three Series A, B, and C – raising $30 and $100 million twice, respectively.

Sustainability

Magrathea: a magnesium-metal smelting company, focused on eliminating mining altogether and solving multiple challenges from geopolitical to environmental. Seawater, brine, and electrolysis are the key ingredients for this carbon-neutral foundry. No open mining required. Magnesium plays a critical role in future industries from mobility to infrastructure. They just closed a $10 million seed round.

Uncommon: cell-based meat grown in labs? The European “cultivated meat” startup has just raised $30 million in their Series A from three investors including Sam Altman. A UK-based venture exploring alternative food supply with RNA technology, best known for mRNA vaccines, now super-charging alternative meat sources with positive ecological impact.

Mobility

Boom: According to their own press release, with 130 orders and pre-orders from American, United, and Japan Airlines, this supersonic aviation company promises cruising speeds of up to 1.7x the speed of sound and at 20km cruising altitude. Supersonic airplanes for the next generation with first flights of their 2.2 Mach XB-1 prototype scheduled for 2023. The first test of their commercial flyer “Overture” is expected for 2027, and subsequent introduction by 2029.

Hermeus Hypersonic Aviation: Typical for Altman to invest in more than one company within a vertical – here another supersonic aviation company targeting even faster speeds of up to Mach 5. Already partnering with NASA and US Air Force, Hermeus had their 2022 $100 million Series B led by Altman. With first scheduled flights of their prototype this year, dubbed “Quarterhorse” and equipped with a $60 million US Air Force contract, their aim is to ultimately launch commercial flights.

Learning

Campus: Leading a $29 million Series A for Campus, a US-wide community college platform connecting professors and teachers from various faculties efficiently and providing an alternative to the classic 4-year on-site programs with more affordable options. Though catered to the specifics of the US-market, the basic framework is potentially internationally attractive and scalable as well.

Consumer

Atmos: $12.5 million, led by Khosla Ventures, for a pre-construction and construction phase home planner with a full design environment, lot and property planning tools, and matchmaking for service providers and builders. 5% of construction costs as fee from homebuyers and $20k flat fee from builders are to make up the revenue stream.

Rewind: Install Rewind on your Mac and have literally everything recorded, stored, and searchable. Nothing gets lost, forgotten, or deleted – every document, decision, interaction at your fingertips. This promise from Rewind has spurred a $15 million investment backed by Andreessen Horowitz to Sam Altman and others.

Spring: An Amaze Software company, provides merch and content designing and creation tools for influencers and social media personalities. Investment amount is undisclosed, though the market for content creation and monetization is growing and will definitely produce an upside.

In summary

Sam Altman entertains a web of investments across industries and technologies – some with him sitting on the board of directors and some with him in the background. Most of the investments go through Hydrazine Capital, founded by Sam and Jack Altman, investing their own money together with other LPs like Peter Thiel and other Silicon Valley heavy hitters. Or through Apollo Projects, another investment firm he runs with his brothers Jack and Max Altman.

This article is not suggesting or promoting investment decisions or transactional engagement of any kind. So please be responsible for your own investments and those you do for others.

Most of us won't have the cash like Sam Altman. That said, I have to admit it’s even more important to keep the good of society and our environment, as well as the bottom-line benefit for all stakeholders, as the key rationale for all activities. Unprecedented investing leverage in disruptive technologies have the power to shape our future. And impact our society over generations. With that in mind, we have to give ecology, education, energy, and access to health for all more focus – for the progress of humankind.

Just my two cents. ??

#OpenAI #VC #startup #technology #future