The thesis is as follows:
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
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.)
[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/
Also, doesn't musk hate him? I have to imagine he's behind this.
> have to imagine he's behind this
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.)
Elizabeth Lopatto at The Verge makes a strong case we _do_ have proof that Musk is actively gathering and throwing fuel on the fire: https://www.theverge.com/ai-artificial-intelligence/929129/s...
> 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.
Doesn't Sam Altman famously not own OpenAI? His whole arrangement is so shady.
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.
When someone tells you who they are, you should believe them.
> ... I still kind of want to try to believe he's not.
Asking genuinely - why?
What if it's actually super-intelligence and a human aligned visionary is at the helm. The good case is very good.
Uhh literally what is one thing Sam has done or said that demonstrates he's either human-aligned or visionary?
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?
He will say whatever it takes to get the result he wants. That's manipulative and, when pursued as a lifestyle, sociopathic.
Living like that is corrupting. When you treat humans like objects, the question of your starting intentions is really secondary.
We already reached agi a while ago.
>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."
Even if the board votes in favor, wouldn't it be tax evasion to fund a for-profit corporation using a 503(c)(3) - which is tax deductible for donors?
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
some of the largest for profit investors are non-profits.
It is all about if you can get the money back out.
no, the thesis is: can the fascists control sam altman.
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"?
I can't help but think that this is due to Musk putting pressure on the current administration to help him win his lawsuit and punish Altman.
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.
How do you knee cap big tech when other countries continue to push forward with it?
If only there were some way to bet on the outcome...
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.
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.
would you prefer sociopath? they're willing to lie to accumulate massive wealth irrespective of the harm.
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".
> like Pedophile
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.
Outside of Elon Musk's Twitter, I think pedophile is actually used pretty appropriately in most spots.
who's calling people pedos that don't at least have credible allegations against them of that crime (eg trump)?
How does everyone else suffer? We’re getting subsidized compute.
Look around at the country right now
Nothing to do with Altman v Musk. That would be an AI boom that would be going full steam ahead without either of them.
Almost no one in the country is feeling a boom. Everyone is feeling the consequences of their greed and recklessness.
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.
The AI boom started a war with Iran and dismantled American public institutions?
Musk has a lot to do with the state of the country right now. Do you read the news?
You are really giving him a lot of credit here. Thats mostly the news cycle doing what it does - focusing on the big stories and loudest speakers.
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?
He ran a government institution that recklessly cut public spending and hurt us all. What are you talking about?
DOGE only cut like $7 billion dollars which is nothing in the bigger picture.
> The moves follow an April article in The Wall Street Journal that detailed Altman’s efforts to have OpenAI back companies he personally invested in.
Sounds a bit like Wework.
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.
Everything about OpenAI sounds like WeWork. Can't wait to see that S1, I'll need a truckload of popcorn.
and famously this executive doesn't over-reach to protect "its own"?
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.
Are you complaining that government is not corrupt enough?
That seems like a fairly obvious misreading of the comment.
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"
I didn't see anything related to homophobia in the comment or any replies except yours...
There's a strand of white neoliberal gays (Sam, Thiel) who have thrown their lot in with the far-right for economic benefit.
If any of them read books I would send them a biography of Ernst Röhm
Blackmailers and protection rackets aren't known for being satisfied after a single payment, after they've established someone is willing to pay.
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.
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.
When his company goes tits-up and connected investors lose billions, he'll suddenly face punishment.
"hasn’t stolen enough from the rich to earn any sort of punishment". Do you truly believe this is how the world works?
Its definitely how America works right now
> Do you truly believe this is how the world works?
It’s a popular meme in Silicon Valley. Hence all the stealing.
I am sure that nothing illegal was done here.
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.
The whole idea of a non profit never made any sense, it’s conflating the idea of profitability with altruism. These are completely independent things.
they're not independent; a 501c3 is both a nonprofit and is meant to serve a public good (altruism).
Alternative to archive.ph
Text-only, HTTPS optional
No CAPTCHA, no Javascript, no geo-blocking, no DDoS directed at blog
https://assets.msn.com/content/view/v2/Detail/en-in/AA22Xx2j...
Something like
x=https://assets.msn.com/content/view/v2/Detail/en-in/AA22Xx2j/
tnftp -4o"|sed 's/.*\"body\":\"/<meta charset=utf-8>/;s/\",\"readTimeMin.*//'" $x > 1.htm
firefox ./1.htm
or
links https://assets.msn.com/content/view/v2/Detail/en-in/AA22Xx2j/
Press "d" then "\"
or
links -dump https://assets.msn.com/content/view/v2/Detail/en-in/AA22Xx2j/ \
|sed '1,/\"body\":\"/d;/\"readTimeMin\":/,$d'
That's a JSON file right?
The Internet is borked.
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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.
Ah a shakedown. He will make the required donation and this will go away.
Demand his AI chat history be made public!
They aren't going to do a thing to Altman except extract more bribes.
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.
> Business Dealings Under GOP Scrutiny
Is this even a thing anymore?
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.
This can easily be resolved by a sustantial purchase of Trump family crypto.
The Khan demands 10,000 eyeballs as tribute!
Altman is a consummate liar and insatiably greedy. The GOP will welcome him in. The downfall will hurt many.
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."
Is this why Claude recommended that I use a Trump phone when I use it?