Woke OpenAI’s Sam Altman Reverts to Leftist Form, Ditches Trump to Host San Francisco Fundraiser for Democrat Sen. Mark Warner

Sam Altman, the CEO of ChatGPT developer OpenAI, is among the list of people set to host a fundraiser for Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA), who has voted against most of President Donald Trump’s cabinet nominees.

Other people who will join Altman in hosting a lunch fundraiser for Warner on March 20 include, Chris Lehane, a Democrat political consultant, according to an invitation to the fundraiser viewed by Breitbart News. In August 2024, the New York Times reported that OpenAI had picked Lehane to serve as the vice president of global policy.

Josh Ackil — who co-founded the Franklin Square Group, and has “served in the Clinton White House as Special Assistant to the President,” and Matt Tanielian — who also co-founded the Franklin Square Group, and “served as Counsel” for former Sen. Robert Torricelli (D-NJ), will also host the fundraiser for Warner.

In addition to voting against most of Trump’s cabinet picks, Warner, who serves as the vice chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, was one of the factors behind the slow-walking of now-Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard’s confirmation.

Altman serving as one of the hosts of the fundraiser comes after he and SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son, and Oracle Board Chair and CTO Larry Ellison joined Trump at the White House in January to announce that the men were joining together to create a company named, “Stargate.”

Breitbart News’s Nick Gilbertson previously reported Trump announced Altman, Ellison, and Son were creating “the largest AI infrastructure project by far in history,” adding that it would take place in the United States. Trump also announced that Stargate would be investing “$500 billion, at least, in AI infrastructure” in the U.S.

“I’m thrilled we get to do this in the United States of America. I think this will be the most important project of this era,” Altman said, adding, “”We wouldn’t be able to do this without you, Mr. President and I’m thrilled that we get to. I think it will be an exciting project.”

In response to the announcement of the Stargate Project, Elon Musk, who co-founded OpenAI, claimed that the billionaire investors “don’t actually have the money.”

Altman has also previously stated that he has “changed” his perspective on Trump, adding that he wished that he “had done more” of his “own thinking.”

As Breitbart News’s Lucas Nolan previously reported, Altman expressing his change in perspective on Trump came after he had “responded to Musk’s comments” on the Stargate Project, saying that Musk was wrong.

Altman swiftly responded to Musk’s comments, stating that the Tesla CEO was “wrong” and emphasizing the importance of the project for the country. He also urged Musk to prioritize the U.S. in his new role, even if it may not always align with his companies’ optimal interests. The exchange escalated further, with Altman questioning Musk’s character and treatment of OpenAI, while Musk resurfaced old anti-Trump tweets and criticized Altman’s connections to Democrat donor Reid Hoffman. This prompted Altman to publicly state his change of heart about Trump.

Altman and Musk, who co-founded OpenAI in 2015, have been engaged in an ongoing feud. In February, Musk “made a $97.4 billion unsolicited offer to acquire control of OpenAI.” While Musk “expressed his desire to see OpenAI return to its roots as an ‘open-source, safety-focused force for good,” Altman rejected this offer and proposed that his company would buy X for $9.74 billion.

The Wall Street Journal reported that, according to “conversations with more than a dozen people” who were “familiar with Altman and Musk’s relationship over the years,” the two men “couldn’t be more different.”

While Musk was beaten up and verbally abused as a child, Altman was a teacher’s pet whose parents routinely told him he could be whatever he wanted to be. Where Musk was often abrasive, Altman tended to tell people what they wanted to hear. And while Musk is an engineer, steeping himself in the details of rocket and battery design, Altman is a technology-obsessed intellectual, reading widely across philosophy, science and literature and penning essays on how society should organize itself.

Altman and Musk met “when Y Combinator partner Geoff Ralson introduced them” to each other.

After founding OpenAI in 2015, the relationship between Musk and Altman “began to disintegrate in 2017, after OpenAI researchers realized they would need far more money than a nonprofit could raise to develop advanced AI,” according to the outlet.

Musk ended up leaving in 2018, and OpenAI — under the leadership of Altman, went on to “focus on research” and “released a new product called ChatGPT” in November 2022.

The Wall Street Journal reported that while “Musk began publicly criticizing OpenAI for moving too fast and not taking safety seriously,” he ended up launching “his own for-profit, open-source artificial intelligence company, xAI.”

That research release turned out to be one of the most successful and transformative consumer-technology products of the century, in the company of the iPhone, Facebook and TikTok. As shocked as the rest of the world that AI had gone mainstream and upset that he wasn’t part of it, Musk began publicly criticizing OpenAI for moving too fast and not taking safety seriously. He signed an open letter calling for a six-month pause on AI development.

Within a few months, Musk launched his own for-profit, open-source artificial-intelligence company, xAI, but its technology and market impact have lagged well behind OpenAI. Musk hoped he would become a serious rival to Altman, but didn’t even become a nuisance.

The fundraiser, which is set to take place in San Francisco, California, represents “Altman’s first known hosted political fund-raiser since the 2022 cycle,” according to the New York Times.

The outlet noted that Altman has “made some small contributions in the 2024 cycle,” and that he even donated “$1 million” to Trump’s inaugural committee.

While Altman has previously donated to Trump’s inaugural committee, several board members of OpenAI consist of Dr. Sue Desmond-Hellman, the former CEO of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation; and Bret Taylor, the former chairman of the board of Twitter.

While working at Twitter, now known as X, Taylor was one of the people who banned Trump from the social media platform in the aftermath of January 6, 2021 riot at the Capitol. Twitter claimed that after a “close review” of some of Trump’s tweets, they had “permanently suspended the account due to the risk of further incitement of violence.”

The social media platform at the time also removed a video that Trump had posted, calling on supporters of his to “peacefully disperse” and to respect law and order.

Taylor, who serves as the chairman for OpenAI’s board issued a statement in response to Musk’s $97.4 billion offer, stating that “the board has unanimously rejected Mr. Musk’s latest attempt to disrupt his competition,” according to the New York Times.

The New York Post reported that Taylor was among the list of former Twitter board members who had donated thousands to Democrats. Taylor, who also serves as the CEO of Salesforce, “donated $713,637” to former President Joe Biden’s 2020 presidential campaign.

Desmond-Hellman, who previously headed the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, has also previously served as the chancellor at the University of California, San Francisco from 2009 to 2014, and as the president of product development Genentech, Inc., according to her LinkendIn.

In October 2024, the New York Times reported that billionaire and Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, along with Microsoft, had donated around $50 million to a non-profit organization that was supporting former Vice President Kamala Harris’s run for president.

Breitbart News’s Joel Pollak reported in January that the “Committee to Protect Health Care,” which was opposing the nomination of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as the Secretary of Health and Human Services, had issued a letter against Kennedy Jr. with fake signatures. The committee turned out to be a “Gates-baked ‘Astroturf’ organization.”

The Committee to Protect Health Care is a 501(c)4 organization, meaning that it does not have to reveal its donors.

However, a related 501(c)3 charity, The Committee to Protect Health Care Fund, does have to reveal its donors. It is funded in part by the “left-of-center Sixteen Thirty Fund (1630 Fund) and Hopewell Fund.” The Hopewell Fund, in turn, has “hired Arabella Advisors, a leading national philanthropy services firm, to manage its project hosting and fiscal sponsorship services.” The Sixteen Thirty Fund is likewise managed by the Arabella Advisors organization.

Among the list of donors to Arabella are, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, liberal megadonor George Soros, and Gates, according to Capital Research.

The Gates Foundation has also been reported to have donated to A Pathway to Equitable Math Instruction, which consists of “a group of 25 education organizations whose curriculum states that asking students to show their work and find the right answer is an inherently racist practice,” according to the Washington Free Beacon.

Breitbart News reported in May 2022, that the Gates Foundation had poured millions of dollars int0 11 out of 26 organizations “that signed an open letter” calling for Twitter advertisers to boycott the social media platform if Musk restored “free speech.”

Breitbart