In an explosive interview, Indian American whistleblower and former OpenAI researcher Suchir Balaji’s mother has alleged that her son did not commit suicide, butwas killed as he had documents against the Sam Altman-owned company.
“My son had documents against OpenAI. They attacked him and killed him,” Poornima Rao said in an hour-long interview with American commentator Tucker Carlson. Tesla CEO Elon Musk shared it on X, captioning it ‘Extremely concerning’.
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Some packages were also missing, she said, adding, “Everybody is suppressed, nobody is ready to come up and tell the truth. Even the attorneys have been made to tell that it is a suicide.”
The 26-year-old former OpenAI employee was found dead in his San Francisco apartment in November, shortly after he had turned a whistleblower against AI-giant.
Rao, has time and again claimed that it was a murder not suicide, as concluded by authorities after an initial investigation. The family has been demanding an FBI investigation into the case, highlighting several lapses and alleging that Balaji was murdered.
Rao recalled that the San Francisco Office of the Chief Medical Examiner had declared that her son died by suicide even after she told them that Balaji was not depressed recently and could not have killed himself.
“My son celebrated his birthday a day before he died. What more do we need to give on account that he was in a happy mood?” she asked. Rao said that Balaji had even received his birthday gift from his father the same day he was later found dead.
Balaji’s mother also slammed the police, claiming that they held on to information and were not transparent about it. She claimed that police passed it off as suicide in just 14 minutes.
“How I knew that my son was dead was by looking at the white van,” she said. The police did not inform her and kept making excuses. “It took them 14 minutes to determine the cause of death and tell me that it was a suicide. In the evening, they returned the keys to me and told me that I could pick up the body tomorrow.”
In an earlier post on X, Rao had said that Suchir Balaji’s “apartment was ransacked” and there was apparently a “sign of struggle in the bathroom.” She also claimed that bloodstains were found there. “Someone hit him in the bathroom. There were blood spots,” she said, concluding that “It was cold-blooded murder declared by authorities as suicide.”
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Rao also accused ChatGPT of interfering with the investigations, claiming witnesses were silenced and even attorneys were asked to tag his death as a suicide. She also said that “some documents which he had against them were missing after the death.”
Balaji worked at OpenAI for nearly four years before he resigned in August, 2023. He expressed dissatisfaction with the company’s shift to a for-profit model. His mother said this shift was a key factor in his decision to leave and turn whistleblower.