Some of those funds are redirected to for profit ventures.
Critically, the GM (Altman) of the nonprofit owns shares of the for-profit ventures, that OpenAI funds were redirected into.
A regular company could and does invest in any company even when there's a conflict, as long as the conflict is disclosed and the Board votes in favor of it. There's no criminal element there.
The problem is introduced in Altman's case if
(a) there was no disclosure (red flag) and/or
(b) nonprofit that received the funds, is putting money into things not aligned with the 501(c)(3) mission.
I'm not sure if either (a) or (b) are criminal, but they don't pass the smell test, which is why Altman is being sued in civil court, unrelated to the congressional investigation talked about in the article
The thesis is Altman ran around saying he was building something that will kill everyone, then backed off to saying he’ll just kill everyone’s jobs.
When data centers and a war of choice pushed inflation to 7+% [1], Republicans in the Congress were left scrambling for a scapegoat. And Sam is a terrific scapegoat. He has no public shareholders like the more hated Zuckerberg and Bezos [2]. Yet he has carved for himself a uniquely-visibly throne for a private-company boss. (His only rival for scapegoatiness is Musk. But he’s inoculated from Republicans by his blatant partisanship.)
Is Musk probably throwing fuel on the fire? Yes, probably. (Though we have no proof of this.)
Is Musk causing this? No. This is mainly Altman’s doing. The hyperbole. The lying. The leverage. The pomp. Even Zuckerberg and Bezos haven’t painted a target on themselves like he has. (To the point that I’m borderline sympathetic.)
> But the thing is, Molo doesn’t actually have to be good at this job, because the point of this trial isn’t to win — though I’m sure Musk wouldn’t mind a win. The point is to punish Altman, Brockman, and OpenAI. Musk has done that pretty thoroughly — reinforcing in the public’s mind that Altman is a liar and a snake. This morning, I read an exclusive in The Wall Street Journal that assorted Republican AGs and the House Oversight committee wanted to look into Sam Altman’s investments. References to the trial are peppered throughout the article.
Oh sure, the trial is maybe 5% a Hail Mary and 95% about distracting and disrupting OpenAI. I read "behind this" to mean more-clandestine moves, e.g. planting stories, conducting and leaking oppo, amplifying negative media on X, et cetera.
It does seem like there is a ton of negative PR and sentiment on social media (including HN) about anything Altman and even Dario do. Like, way more than warranted. It looks more and more like a coordinated campaign, a la https://paulgraham.com/submarine.html
Elon even explicitly threatened the OpenAI guys that they would be "the most hated" people on earth, and given what we've seen him do with Twitter, I strongly suspect there indeed is a submarine with Elon at the periscope.
Altman may be getting the brunt of the AI backlash, but the impact of AI is still extremely preliminary, and it will happen regardless of anything he does. As you mentioned, it doesn't help that these guys are telling the world AI will disrupt all the jobs but... at this point, I think they're just being honest.
As shifty as Altman is, I wonder how he gets more hate than Elon, who has objectively done way more concrete damage to the world.
So a non-profit can absolute invest in or own a for-profit subsidary. This is extremely common. The idea is that the for-profit returns will flow back to the non-profit and remain dedicated to the non-profit mission.
Where things get really shady and run the risk of IRS violations is when the leadership of the non-profit has a seperate for profit stake in the subsidary.
Is there a more benign explanation for these things? Altman is undeniably famously cagey and political but despite most of the tech and non-tech worlds at this point seeing him as some kind of con artist, I still kind of want to try to believe he's not.
No doubt some of OpenAI's founding principles like "stop + assist if a competitor gets to AGI first" are likely flying out the window, perhaps in part due to him and also as one might anticipate of initial lofty ideals and promises, but even with the recent New Yorker and other articles he seems like someone who maybe regularly placates people to avoid personal problems and lies to get out of trouble rather than a Machiavellian tech baron.
> he seems like someone who maybe regularly placates people to avoid personal problems and lies to get out of trouble rather than a Machiavellian tech baron.
This would be more plausible were it not for the staggering amount of wealth he’s amassed through those lies.
Come on… The guy who said he can’t imagine caring for his child without consulting ChatGPT… The guy who said he didn’t know how to make revenue with ChatGPT, and made a “soft promise” to investors they’d somehow achieve AGI then ask it how to make money… The guy who made a cryptocurrency scam that was banned in multiple countries… The guy who everyone around him says he’s a con artist and a sociopath… That guy? Really?
>The problem is introduced in Altman's case if (a) there was no disclosure (red flag)
The article says the investments were disclosed:
"OpenAI board chairman Bret Taylor defended Altman in a court hearing Monday, testifying that Altman had been “forthright” and “proactive and transparent” about his involvements in other companies. Altman recused himself from recent discussions about a deal between OpenAI and Helion as well, The Wall Street Journal reported."
No, non profits can invest in anything. Publicly traded stocks are c-corps too, thats how endowments grow. There is nothing that distinguishes liquid vs illiquid c-corp shares.
Regarding founder ownership, the rules are extremely flexible like a non profit director can’t own more than 20 voting or 35% total of the business venture
but if it happens then it just needs to be remedied within 3 years
so for venture style deals that’s plenty of time to dilute down, and the little known secret in the startup space is that the founders non profit steps in as the lead investor, so all the other investors arent just twiddling their thumbs waiting for a founder to convince someone, it just closes. Other investors dilute founder and non profit, everything is compliant, value is created. Both for profit and non profit side will be tax free, due to QSBS
That is emphatically NOT the thesis of the linked article. That's the argument made by the politicians being quoted and enumerated. What the article is trying to tell you is that these actions are entirely partisan, and reflect the desires and statements of the largest and wealthiest republican donor, who happens to own a competing interest.
You can think Altman is a bad person and OpenAI is something of a scam and still recognize that using the government as a tool to corruptly hobble your competition is a horrifyingly bad thing.
These are awful times we live in, I really fear what we'll have to be telling our grandkids. Will it be just a cautionary tale about the dangers of populism and partisanship or will it be sad, wistful tales about how much better things were... "before"?
Personal vendettas between the world's most powerful psychopaths playing out in the stock market while everyone else suffers does seem like the current meta. So it makes sense.
I'm all for it, let them attack each other and hopefully the backlash will elect a labor President to turn the final screws on knee capping big tech for the next 50 years.
Democrats being only slightly less beholden to corporate interests and functioning as controlled opposition is exactly how we've gotten to the point we're at. I'd like to be optimistic and say that the backlash from the second Trump catastrophe will be a full 8 years of simmering authoritarianism rather than the current rolling boil, but that wasn't even true after 2020. I think media saturation has gotten so strong that people are just so much easier to lead around by the nose. For example look at how many continuing hardcore Trump supporters there still are, even in the face of appalling abject failures like his choosing to simply give away the Strait of Hormuz of Iran. They've got ever-shifting rationalizations streaming into their brains 24/7.
God why do people frame things in such extremes? Neither person is a psychopath. If anyone is closer to a psychopath it’s Altman, but he doesn’t completely fit the monicker.
For all his weirdness and moral failings, I don’t see Altman saying things like whites being under apartheid in the US. And worse. Multiple times a day. Every day.
When you're arguing the degree to which such powerful people fit the definition of psychopath, you're at extremes. You've just been in the warming pot too long to see it.
So, now we need a clinical diagnosis to call evil people psychopaths or we're unhinged? Do you apply the same high standards to any of the garbage these guys spew or to the impacts of their projects?
The people that have made decisions leading to the direct deaths of millions of people AREN'T evil! There's no clinical definition of evil in the DSM, so they can't be evil you see.
They are absolutely psychopaths. These are people that will flagrantly lie to your face and feel no remorse. They cause mass suffering and feel no remorse. They don't have empathy. They don't have normal human emotions.
Haven't you heard? Psychopath, like Pedophile, is a mere epithet these days, to indicate a person's favoured status with the in-crowd. In contrast to the equally meaningless epithet "woke".
huh? What are you are referring to is the lasting impacts of multiple years of inflation after living without it for 10 years. Those issues predate Musk v. Altman and would be happening without them.
AI build out / boom would be full bore without them.
There is no boom. There are massive layoffs, massive inflation, and massive cuts to government services - all caused by the actions of Musk, Altman, and those like them.
He was the de facto head of an effort to drastically cut the federal government, and he's donated hundreds of millions of dollars to get Trump and Trump-adjacent people elected. I ask again: do you read the news?
To be fair, a big part of being in Y Combinator itself is being "heavily encouraged" to use products from other Y Combinators. You just have to do it openly.
Networking and relationship building is fine. its when it goes beyond that, and in particular when there are conflicts of interest, it becomes a problem. Altman seems to have had similar issues when he was at YC: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2026/04/13/sam-altman-may...
Doing business with companies connected to the CEO often creates a conflict of interest. it could all be OK, of course, but OpenAI investing in companies that Altman has already invested in does not look great and needs to be investigated.
But the fact that OpenAI was a nonprofit and then suddenly became a for-profit is definitely something that does not feel right. I am 100% sure that it is all legal and such, but we have this mental model that “nonprofits are the good guys, run by people who just want to help humanity and nothing else.”
Your original comment implied that this is a signal that Sam’s influence over the admin hasn’t protected his interests, when that’s still to be seen. The protection racket could still very well benefit him if the SEC ends up taking the case and the admin then tries to interfere with SEC’s independence.
He's saying "hey, maybe stop donating to Republicans expecting them to help you out when in reality they will screw over anyone but themselves and especially don't donate to them when the GOP is aggressively homophobic and wants to get rid of your existence entirely"
Does anyone really believe this is more than performative? Increasingly the most likely outcome of such scrutiny is… nothing. He hasn’t stolen enough from the rich to earn any sort of punishment, and he’s not doing anything too different from the Congress critters that are “investigating” him.
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Timing's also worth nothing. the investments piece has been reported on for over a year. It becomes a probe right before liquidity, which makes both sides look opportunistic rather than principled.
How can anyone take the GOP seriously when they constantly back one of the biggest frauds of the American people who is also a pedophile rapist? Perhaps Sam should embrace that sexual assault allegation from his sister. That seems to be the type of person the GOP supports.
The notion that this GOP Oversight Committee sincerely cares about corruption is obviously laughable, so I can only assume this is all being done at Elon's behest.
OpenAI receives funds as a non-profit.
Some of those funds are redirected to for profit ventures.
Critically, the GM (Altman) of the nonprofit owns shares of the for-profit ventures, that OpenAI funds were redirected into.
A regular company could and does invest in any company even when there's a conflict, as long as the conflict is disclosed and the Board votes in favor of it. There's no criminal element there.
The problem is introduced in Altman's case if
(a) there was no disclosure (red flag) and/or
(b) nonprofit that received the funds, is putting money into things not aligned with the 501(c)(3) mission.
I'm not sure if either (a) or (b) are criminal, but they don't pass the smell test, which is why Altman is being sued in civil court, unrelated to the congressional investigation talked about in the article
When data centers and a war of choice pushed inflation to 7+% [1], Republicans in the Congress were left scrambling for a scapegoat. And Sam is a terrific scapegoat. He has no public shareholders like the more hated Zuckerberg and Bezos [2]. Yet he has carved for himself a uniquely-visibly throne for a private-company boss. (His only rival for scapegoatiness is Musk. But he’s inoculated from Republicans by his blatant partisanship.)
[1] https://www.bls.gov/news.release/cpi.nr0.htm 0.6% MoM in April, 0.9% MoM in March
[2] https://techoversight.org/2025/06/11/tech-ceo-poll-25/
Is Musk probably throwing fuel on the fire? Yes, probably. (Though we have no proof of this.)
Is Musk causing this? No. This is mainly Altman’s doing. The hyperbole. The lying. The leverage. The pomp. Even Zuckerberg and Bezos haven’t painted a target on themselves like he has. (To the point that I’m borderline sympathetic.)
> But the thing is, Molo doesn’t actually have to be good at this job, because the point of this trial isn’t to win — though I’m sure Musk wouldn’t mind a win. The point is to punish Altman, Brockman, and OpenAI. Musk has done that pretty thoroughly — reinforcing in the public’s mind that Altman is a liar and a snake. This morning, I read an exclusive in The Wall Street Journal that assorted Republican AGs and the House Oversight committee wanted to look into Sam Altman’s investments. References to the trial are peppered throughout the article.
Elon even explicitly threatened the OpenAI guys that they would be "the most hated" people on earth, and given what we've seen him do with Twitter, I strongly suspect there indeed is a submarine with Elon at the periscope.
Altman may be getting the brunt of the AI backlash, but the impact of AI is still extremely preliminary, and it will happen regardless of anything he does. As you mentioned, it doesn't help that these guys are telling the world AI will disrupt all the jobs but... at this point, I think they're just being honest.
As shifty as Altman is, I wonder how he gets more hate than Elon, who has objectively done way more concrete damage to the world.
Where things get really shady and run the risk of IRS violations is when the leadership of the non-profit has a seperate for profit stake in the subsidary.
No doubt some of OpenAI's founding principles like "stop + assist if a competitor gets to AGI first" are likely flying out the window, perhaps in part due to him and also as one might anticipate of initial lofty ideals and promises, but even with the recent New Yorker and other articles he seems like someone who maybe regularly placates people to avoid personal problems and lies to get out of trouble rather than a Machiavellian tech baron.
This would be more plausible were it not for the staggering amount of wealth he’s amassed through those lies.
Asking genuinely - why?
Living like that is corrupting. When you treat humans like objects, the question of your starting intentions is really secondary.
The article says the investments were disclosed:
"OpenAI board chairman Bret Taylor defended Altman in a court hearing Monday, testifying that Altman had been “forthright” and “proactive and transparent” about his involvements in other companies. Altman recused himself from recent discussions about a deal between OpenAI and Helion as well, The Wall Street Journal reported."
Regarding founder ownership, the rules are extremely flexible like a non profit director can’t own more than 20 voting or 35% total of the business venture
but if it happens then it just needs to be remedied within 3 years
so for venture style deals that’s plenty of time to dilute down, and the little known secret in the startup space is that the founders non profit steps in as the lead investor, so all the other investors arent just twiddling their thumbs waiting for a founder to convince someone, it just closes. Other investors dilute founder and non profit, everything is compliant, value is created. Both for profit and non profit side will be tax free, due to QSBS
It is all about if you can get the money back out.
You can think Altman is a bad person and OpenAI is something of a scam and still recognize that using the government as a tool to corruptly hobble your competition is a horrifyingly bad thing.
These are awful times we live in, I really fear what we'll have to be telling our grandkids. Will it be just a cautionary tale about the dangers of populism and partisanship or will it be sad, wistful tales about how much better things were... "before"?
I really wouldn’t conflate these two. People with documented allegations of child rape are in a separate category from diagnosed-over-the-TV types.
AI build out / boom would be full bore without them.
https://fortune.com/2026/05/12/lake-tahoe-data-center-49000-...
Sounds a bit like Wework.
Doing business with companies connected to the CEO often creates a conflict of interest. it could all be OK, of course, but OpenAI investing in companies that Altman has already invested in does not look great and needs to be investigated.
But the fact that OpenAI was a nonprofit and then suddenly became a for-profit is definitely something that does not feel right. I am 100% sure that it is all legal and such, but we have this mental model that “nonprofits are the good guys, run by people who just want to help humanity and nothing else.”
But that is not true, and probably never was.
[1]: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/openai-exec-becomes-top-trump...
Which was motivated by a WSJ investigation into Sam’s personal dealings https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/chatgpt-openai-ipo-altman-029ae6...
If any of them read books I would send them a biography of Ernst Röhm
That is why public corruption is such as plague and one of the reasons the US dollar was seen as a safe store of value once.
It’s a popular meme in Silicon Valley. Hence all the stealing.
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Trouble is, Elon Musk indirectly gave him even more.
Is this even a thing anymore?
In the words of Hitchens, "Do not imagine that you can escape judgment if you rob people with a false prospectus rather than with a knife."