A former Artificial Intelligence (AI) researcher at OpenAI was found dead in his San Francisco apartment. Twenty-six-year-old Suchir Balaji worked for OpenAI from November 2020 to August 2024. “No evidence of foul play was found during the initial investigation,” Officer Robert Rueca, a spokesperson with the San Francisco Police Department, said.
The officials found him dead in his Buchanan Street flat on November 26, the San Francisco Police said. The police arrived at his apartment after his friends expressed concerns over his well-being, and found him dead.
He was confirmed dead that day and the news of his demise has come up now. The medical examiner has not revealed the cause of Balaji’s death, however, the police said that at present, there is “no evidence of foul play”, according to reports.
His role and knowledge were considered crucial in legal proceedings against OpenAI. Balaji had publicly claimed three months before his death that OpenAI had breached copyright legislation in the development of ChatGPT.
In October 2024, reports came out that CEO Sam Altman was pitching the White House on a hugely ambitious AI infrastructure project that would build 5-gigawatt data centers across the United States. (That’s a mind-boggling amount of power per data center, equivalent to the output of 5 nuclear reactors.)
But then things started to go downhill. Shortly after these announcements, Chief Technology Officer Mira Murati announced she was leaving OpenAI. She was almost immediately followed by Chief Research Officer Bob McGrew and a research VP named Barret Zoph.
That brings the total number of OpenAI researchers and executives who have quit this year up to 20—and that number includes multiple co-founders of the company.
The departures came at the same time as reports that OpenAI is working on a plan to restructure into a for-profit company and give Altman equity. And those came at the same time a series of unflattering reports were published depicting chaos and delays within the company.
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