OpenAI’s Sam Altman to donate $1mn to Donald Trump’s inauguration fund

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OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman will donate $1mn of his personal money to Donald Trump’s inaugural fund, the company confirmed on Friday, the latest in a series of gifts from Big Tech and Silicon Valley to show their support for the US president-elect.

The move comes just days after Amazon and Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, announced their own $1mn donations to the Trump fund. Perplexity, an AI-driven search engine, also confirmed it had donated $1mn to the fund on Friday, as first reported by Bloomberg.

Tech companies have rushed to congratulate Trump following his election victory in November as they seek to build relationships with the Republican before he takes office next year.

The growing embrace between Trump and technology investors and executives on the West Coast this year contrasts with the cooler reception he received when he first won the vote in 2016.

A few prominent figures, such as PayPal and Palantir co-founder Peter Thiel, supported Trump then, but Silicon Valley, widely seen as a Democratic stronghold, largely shunned him. Altman himself responded to Trump’s first election win by posting on Twitter: “This feels like the worst thing to happen in my life.” Altman’s donation to the fund was first reported by Fox News.

But Trump has forged a closer relationship with the tech community over the past year, visiting San Francisco for fundraisers and appearing on popular podcasts, including Joe Rogan’s show and All-In, which is hosted by four Silicon Valley investors.

Trump has brought in Elon Musk as one of his closest advisers and an important bridge between Washington and San Francisco. Other prominent figures in Silicon Valley have been tapped for roles in the administration or as informal advisers.

Last week, venture capitalist and All-In host David Sacks was announced as Trump’s AI and crypto tsar, and investor Marc Andreessen has been used as a sounding board on appointments to the newly formed “department of government efficiency”, which will be co-led by Musk and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy.

Altman’s relationship with the Trump administration is complicated by the presence of Musk, who is suing OpenAI over its move to become a for-profit public benefit corporation. Musk, a former investor and co-founder of OpenAI, has alleged the move is an attempt to monopolise the market for generative artificial intelligence. Musk has also launched his own AI start-up, xAI.

In a Reuters event this week, OpenAI chief financial officer Sarah Friar said she trusted Musk “as a competitor [to] put first the national interest and compete appropriately”.

On Friday, OpenAI claimed in a blog post that Musk had, in 2017, when he was still co-chair at OpenAI, suggested and supported a for-profit component with him at the helm.

“When he didn’t get majority equity and full control, he walked away and told us we would fail. Now that OpenAI is the leading AI research lab and Elon runs a competing AI company, he’s asking the court to stop us from effectively pursuing our mission,” OpenAI said in the post.

Musk did not immediately reply to a request for comment.