Democrat Senators Warren and Bennet demand to know why Sam Altman contributed $1 million to President Trump’s inauguration
U.S. Democrat senators Elizabeth Warren of (Massachusetts) and Michael Bennet (Colorado) on Friday expressed concern to OpenAI CEO Sam Altman that he’s attempting to “cozy up to the incoming Trump administration.” In a letter Altman posted on X, Democratic Senators Elizabeth Warren and Michael Bennet suggest OpenAI and other tech companies are trying to influence Trump.
funny, they never sent me one of these for contributing to democrats… pic.twitter.com/xjpanXSb5D
— Sam Altman (@sama) January 17, 2025
Altman plans to attend President Trump’s second inauguration on Monday, CNBC reports, and will reportedly be joining a multitude of his tech peers in Washington, D.C., including Apple CEO Tim Cook, TikTok CEO Shou Chew, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Google CEO Sundar Pichai, and Founder, CEO, and chief engineer of SpaceX, CEO and product architect of Tesla, Inc., Owner, CTO and executive chairman of X, Founder of The Boring Company, X Corp., and xAI, Co-founder of Neuralink, OpenAI, Zip2, X.com, and PayPal, Elon Musk.
The lawmakers said that in the two months since the election, large tech companies have made “million-dollar gifts to President-elect Donald Trump’s inaugural fund in what appears to be an effort to influence and sway the actions and policies of the incoming administration.”
Altman personally contributed $1 million to the inauguration fund. Microsoft, Google, Meta, and Amazon donated the same amount, but as companies rather than from executives. Apple CEO Tim Cook has reportedly also contributed $1 million.
“You have a clear and direct interest in obtaining favors from the incoming administration: your company and many other Big Tech donors are already the subject of ongoing federal investigations and regulatory actions,” according to the letter posted by Altman on X and later by the senators online.
In his post, Altman wrote, “funny, they never sent me one of these for contributing to democrats…”
MacDailyNews Note: In a public response to the senators’ letter, Altman posted on X, “it was a personal contribution as you state; i am confused about the questions given that my company did not make a decision.”
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