The home of Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, the AI pioneer and creator of ChatGPT, was attacked with a Molotov cocktail. “Early this morning, someone threw a Molotov cocktail at Sam Altman’s house and also issued threats at our headquarters in San Francisco,” an OpenAI spokesperson told the news agency AFP on Friday. No one was injured. The suspected assailant has been taken into custody.
The San Francisco Police Department confirmed the attack on the luxury estate of the gay tech entrepreneur in the California city. A man allegedly threw a firebomb, setting the property’s gate on fire. He then fled. Shortly afterward, a call was received at OpenAI’s headquarters. “When officers arrived, they identified the man as the same suspect from the earlier incident and promptly arrested him,” the police explained.
Motivation unclear so far
The motive of the 20-year-old suspect, according to police, was initially unclear. Recently, Altman and OpenAI have become targets of protests by opponents of artificial intelligence who view the technology as a threat to humanity. Critics have particularly pointed to OpenAI offering its services to the U.S. Department of Defense.
OpenAI had made its Chatbot ChatGPT available to the public in late 2022, which suddenly brought the capabilities of AI to a broad audience. At the same time, concerns about potential dangers of the technology grew.
Coming out at 16
Sam Altman came out as gay when he was 16. After a Christian group boycotted a sexuality-themed gathering at his John Burroughs School in Ladue, he addressed the entire community and announced that he was homosexual.
In public, Altman talks little about his sexual orientation. The Missouri-born executive said in a 2014 Esquire interview that the internet helped him accept his sexuality as a teenager growing up in the conservative Midwest. He initially had no one to talk to about it, but online he found conversational partners and “human connection.”
In 2024 it was reported that he married his partner at their shared estate in Hawaii (TheColu.mn reported). Last year Altman publicly identified as a supporter of U.S. President Donald Trump (TheColu.mn reported).
