Open AI CEO Sam Altman, who has become one of Silicon Valley’s most celebrated tech leaders as his company’s ChatGPT product has been at the forefront of consumer-facing artificial intelligence, has been accused by his sister of raping her for years when they were adolescents.
In a complaint filed Monday in the U.S. Eastern District Court of Missouri, Ann Altman states that abuse at the hands of her older brother occurred at their family home in Clayton, Missouri, over nine years, from around 1997 to 2006. She alleges that the abuse began when she was 3 years old and her brother was 12 years old. In the complaint, she states that the abuse consisted of forced sexual assault molestation, sodomy and battery.
Sam Altman denies all of these allegations in a statement posted to his X (formerly Twitter) account on Wednesday and claims that his sister has “mental health challenges” for which she refuses conventional treatment. The statement — which says it comes from Altman, his mother and his two brothers — indicates that Ann Altman has continuously attempted to extract money from her family, despite being issued a monthly stipend from their father’s estate, having her bills and rent paid by them and been offered a house that she would own via a trust.
“All of these claims are utterly untrue,” the statement reads. “This situation causes immense pain to our entire family. It is especially gut-wrenching when she refuses conventional treatment and lashes out at family members who are genuinely trying to help.”
A phone call placed to Ann Altman’s Illinois-based lawyer, Ryan Mahoney, was not immediately returned on Wednesday. Mahoney told the Wall Street Journal that his client has suffered from trauma, “There is no evidence that her own mental health has contributed to her allegations.”
The lawsuit requests a jury trial and damages over $75,000. Damages have burdened the plaintiff “as a result of medical and mental health treatment for her injuries,” the complaint states, including lost wages and benefits.
In a subsequent post on X, Sam Altman wrote that in a letter sent to his attorney from Mahoney, the attorney explained that under Missouri law, they will be able to seek punitive damages and present the jury with Sam Altman’s net worth, which he said he believes will be around $1 billion two years from now, the amount of time he anticipated a case involving childhood sexual abuse spanning many years of rape and incest would take to work through the court.