Oversight chair seeks information from OpenAI's Sam Altman about potential financial conflicts
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WASHINGTON — The chair of the House Oversight Committee has sent a letter to OpenAI Chief Executive Sam Altman requesting information about potential conflicts of interest between Altman’s personal investments and his operation of the company.The letter, sent Friday, comes amid a high-stakes legal battle currently playing out in an Oakland federal courtroom between onetime partners Altman and Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, who in 2015 co-founded the AI company best known for creating ChatGPT.The company was first established solely as a nonprofit corporation and the letter sent to Altman by Rep.James Comer (R-Ky.), the chair of the Oversight committee, indicates that the committee is “investigating potential conflicts of interest involving capital from nonprofit corporations invested in startups and other for-profit companies.”Comer has requested by May 22 a briefing from the company official responsible for oversight of potential conflicts involving company officers and directors, including Altman, as well as all documents related to conflict of interest policies and guidance for those executives.While OpenAI was created as a nonprofit designed to responsibly harness the power of the emerging artificial intelligence technology, the company created a for-profit subsidiary in 2019 and three years later released ChatGPT, which jumpstarted widespread adoption of the technology.Musk, the chief executive of Tesla, left OpenAI’s board in 2018, one year before the creation of the for-profit arm.
He is arguing that Altman and another co-founder, Greg Brockman, betrayed the original mission of the nonprofit organization, driven by their desire to “cash in” on the technology.Musk added Microsoft, a significant investor in OpenAI, to the lawsuit in 2024.OpenAI is rumored to be gearing up to go public later this year or early next, and was recently valued at $852 bill...