Indian-origin teen CEO reveals how he made Sam Altman invest $2.3 million in his company

Aryan Sharma, the co-founder and CEO of Induced AI and Sam Altman, the founder of ChatGPT maker OpenAI.

Earlier this month, a startup founded by a couple of Indian teenagers raised $2.3 million in a round led by Open AI co-founder Sam Altman, Peak XV, and SV Angel.

One among them, 19-year-old founder and CEO Aryan Sharma, recently revealed how he managed to get in touch with Altman and convince him to invest in his company Induced AI.

"We used to send cold emails to all of these people that we would read about (industry leaders). I have embarrassing emails from when I was 14 that I had sent out to people," Sharma said in the podcast Overpowered. "I used to come to SF (San Francisco) trips and meet these interesting people at events. We met him (Sam Altman) once or twice there. Of all the cold outreach emails, some mutuals were formed over time."

The interaction between the two continued for three years and once Sharma even requested Altman to recruit him as a secretary. "I kind of pitched him that 'I will be a secretary, I'll do whatever you want. I just want to be around you and see how stuff is happening at OpenAI' because they have been releasing interesting papers way before language models came out," the teen founder said.

Initially, Altman told Sharma that he had his hands full with OpenAI and Helium. A year later, during an interaction, the ChatGPT maker suggested Sharma focus on AI (artificial intelligence).

So, eventually, Sharma and another 19-year-old, Ayush Pathak, launched Induced AI earlier this year, and Sharma reached out to Altman again.

"I went to him and told him 'You said we'll come to AI... it has sort of happened and it'll be awesome to have you with us. That's basically how that happened.

Describing the company's work, Induced AI said in a statement that it is building “AI workers that act as an extension of your team to complete tasks and projects. Have them work on doing sales, compliance, internal ops and any other browser task you can imagine”.

Read more: Teens’ startup Induced AI raises $2.3 million from Sam Altman, Peak XV