Astro Teller was born Eric Z. Teller in Cambridge, England. He is the grandson of both Gérard Debreu and Edward Teller. Dr. Teller holds a Bachelor of Science in computer science from Stanford University, Masters of Science in symbolic computation (symbolic and heuristic computation), also from Stanford University, and a Ph.D. in artificial intelligence from Carnegie Mellon University, where he was a recipient of the prestigious Hertz fellowship. After working as a teacher at Stanford University, Teller became a business executive.

He is the co-founder & Chairman of BodyMedia, makers of the Bodybugg and the Sensewear armband (wearable devices that function as a dashboard for the human body; measuring sleep, perspiration, motion, and calories burned).

He is CEO & Director of Cerebellum Capital.

In May 2001, he was featured on NPR's All Things Considered, discussing how the good economy has shaped the attitudes of 30-year-olds towards their jobs.

He has lectured at both the TEDMED Conference (2003 & 2004) and ideaCity (2004).

In 2008, he appeared as a political commentator on the national French Television station France24.

He is a published author with Random House. His fiction novel, Exegesis, was published in 1997. It was translated into Dutch, Japanese, Danish, German, and Greeklish.

Teller's definition of Artificial Intelligence ("the science of how to get machines to do the things they do in movies") was quoted in Ray Kurzweil's book, The Age of Spiritual Machines.