OpenAI CEO Sam Altman marries longtime boyfriend: Who is Oliver Mulherin?

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman exchanged vows with his longtime partner, Oliver Mulherin, in an intimate seaside ceremony. The low-key wedding was held in Hawaii, close to the 38-year-old tech entrepreneur’s home on the island, according to multiple media reports. Following a slew of pictures of the OpenAI CEO and Mulherin’s wedding on social media on Thursday, when people began to question if they were real, the couple’s marriage was officially confirmed to NBC News. The photos show the San Francisco couple, dressed in crisp white button-down shirts and single orchid boutonnieres, standing under a bamboo chuppah in the tropical place, and about a dozen guests in attendance at a tropical beach. In one picture, Sam places a ring on Mulherin’s left hand while Altman’s brother Jack Altman, the cofounder and executive chair of the software business Lattice, looks on in his role as an officiant. Here’s all we know about his husband. Who is Oliver Mulherin? Altman, a native of the St. Louis region, spent years avoiding the limelight while he gained prominence in the tech sector as the CEO of Y Combinator, a renowned investment and startup incubator.

Sam Altman just got married today.

Congratulations 👏 pic.twitter.com/kbUvGbLHOa

— Barsee 🐶 (@heyBarsee) January 11, 2024

Nonetheless, he has increased his public appearances and media exposure as CEO of OpenAI, including testifying before Congress. In 2023, TIME magazine even named him “CEO of the Year.” There is a lot of information about Altman, but not much is known about Mulherin or their relationship. Mulherin is an Australian software engineer, who completed his Bachelor’s in computer science from the University of Melbourne in 2016. He worked with Meta in Menlo Park, California, from August 2020 to November 2022. He was also employed by Broadwing and SPARK Neuro, as per NDTV. Times Now reports that Mulherin or “Ollie” as Altman calls him, has worked on several AI projects at the university, with a focus on games and language detection. But his area of expertise is the Internet of Things (IoT), and in 2018 he joined the open-source coding group IOTA Foundation. How long have they been together? A state dinner held by US President Joe Biden at the White House for Prime Minister Narendra Modi was one of the couple’s first public appearances, which took place in June last year. Power couples Sundar and Anjali Pichai and Satya and Anu Nadella were also present at the dinner. Other than that, though, Mulherin seems content to stay out of the spotlight. He has less than 600 followers on his private Instagram account. In a candid September interview with New York Magazine, Altman revealed that he and Mulherin live in a Russian Hill residence in San Francisco during the week, but they take weekend getaways to a newly renovated, 25-year-old house on a private ranch in Napa Valley, California. He added that while he is vegan, his partner is not. The couple also mentioned how eager they were to begin a family shortly. Altman disclosed to the New Yorker that he had a nine-year relationship with Nick Sivo before meeting Mulherin. According to Times Now, they first met at Stanford University and started dating in their sophomore year. Together, they co-founded a start-up called Loopt. In 2004, however, the couple broke up after they sold the company in 2012, New York Magazine reported. Altman on the workfront Sam Altman has rapidly gained recognition as CEO of OpenAI, the artificial intelligence startup behind ChatGPT, which is an advanced chatbot that upended Silicon Valley a year ago and encouraged tech businesses big and small to divert their resources into competing AI initiatives. The GPT Store, which is like an app shop for AI apps, was launched by OpenAI on Wednesday. In 2015, Altman and several tech giants, including Elon Musk, co-founded the company as a nonprofit organisation. He has led OpenAI to become one of the most popular startups in the world in his capacity as CEO. In a struggle for the company’s leadership, the board of OpenAI briefly ousted him in November of last year, but following an intense debate in the boardroom, he returned as CEO four days later. With inputs from agencies