There have been two violent attacks at Sam Altman's house in the past three days. The first one involved a Molotov cocktail which was aimed at his front gate last Friday.
A 20-year-old man was arrested on Friday after throwing a Molotov cocktail at the San Francisco home of Sam Altman, chief executive of the artificial intelligence company OpenAI, according to the company and the police.
The incendiary device lit a fire on the exterior gate of Mr. Altman’s home before dawn, the San Francisco Police Department said in a statement. The suspect then fled on foot but was found about an hour later, at the OpenAI headquarters about three miles away, where he was threatening to burn down the building, the police said.
No one was hurt, and it was unclear if Mr. Altman was home. Allison Maxie, a police spokeswoman, said that charges were pending against the suspect, whom she did not name.
Another site, Mission Local found the name of the person who was booked for the crime.
Around 1 p.m., a 20-year-old man named Daniel Alejandro Moreno-Gama booked into San Francisco County Jail No. 1 was charged with attempted murder and the “explosion” of a “destructive device with intent to injure.” He was also charged with arson, criminal threats, and possession of a “combustible material” or “incendiary device.”
A surveillance photo of the suspect had been sent around by police, which is how they recognized him when he turned up at the Open AI headquarters.
Authorities have arrested a 20-year-old Texas man in the alleged Molotov cocktail attack on Sam Altman early Friday, NBC Bay Area’s Investigative Unit has learned.https://t.co/h2u5KMYQrK pic.twitter.com/2gOD7AsbPh
— NBC Bay Area (@nbcbayarea) April 11, 2026
According to that NBC report, he is being charged with attempted murder and arson.
This morning there was another attack by someone else. This time shots were fired in the direction of Altman's home.
In the latest case, the San Francisco Police Department said someone drove by early Sunday morning and fired a gun at the home.
Soon after, officers arrested a 23-year-old man and a 25-year-old woman a few blocks away.
The pair have since been charged with weapons possession and reckless discharge of a firearm.
There are at least two groups who have organized protests against AI companies in San Francisco, but both of those groups claims they are non-violent.
Last month, protesters gathered outside the San Francisco offices of several A.I. companies — Anthropic, OpenAI and Elon Musk’s xAI. They demanded that the chief executives of major A.I. companies commit to pausing development of the most advanced A.I. models if other labs did the same.
Michaël Trazzi, an organizer of the protest, said in a statement that his group, Stop the A.I. Race, “is and always will be lawful and nonviolent.”
Another group, Stop A.I., has protested at OpenAI’s office, including blocking the doors. In November, the company locked down its offices after it said a person who had previously been associated with that group had “expressed interest in causing physical harm to OpenAI employees.”
In short, San Francisco remains a breeding ground for nutjobs. No big surprise there.
Sam Altman published a personal response after the first attack with opened with a photo of his husband and son.
I wrote this early this morning and I wasn't sure if I would actually publish it, but here it is:https://t.co/7Dw9UFpeep
— Sam Altman (@sama) April 10, 2026
What he wrote is broken into a preface about his family followed by three parts. Here's the preface:
Here is a photo of my family. I love them more than anything.
Images have power, I hope. Normally we try to be pretty private, but in this case I am sharing a photo in the hopes that it might dissuade the next person from throwing a Molotov cocktail at our house, no matter what they think about me.
The first person did it last night, at 3:45 am in the morning. Thankfully it bounced off the house and no one got hurt.
Words have power too. There was an incendiary article about me a few days ago. Someone said to me yesterday they thought it was coming at a time of great anxiety about AI and that it made things more dangerous for me. I brushed it aside.
Now I am awake in the middle of the night and pissed, and thinking that I have underestimated the power of words and narratives. This seems like as good of a time as any to address a few things.
The incendiary article he's talking about is the one by Ronan Farrow which I wrote about here. I don't know if this inspired the attacks but the timing does make it possible. The Farrow story was published last Tuesday and the first attack was three days later.
The three sections that follow are:
- What I believe.
- Some personal reflections.
- Some thoughts about the industry.
I'll skip over parts 1 and 2, you can read those at the link above. But part 3 actually seems to make the case that AI really is as dangerous as its critics think it is, which seems like an odd message to be confirming under these circumstances.
My personal takeaway from the last several years, and take on why there has been so much Shakespearean drama between the companies in our field, comes down to this: “Once you see AGI you can’t unsee it.” It has a real "ring of power” dynamic to it, and makes people do crazy things. I don’t mean that AGI is the ring itself, but instead the totalizing philosophy of “being the one to control AGI”...
A lot of the criticism of our industry comes from sincere concern about the incredibly high stakes of this technology. This is quite valid, and we welcome good-faith criticism and debate. I empathize with anti-technology sentiments and clearly technology isn’t always good for everyone. But overall, I believe technological progress can make the future unbelievably good, for your family and mine.
While we have that debate, we should de-escalate the rhetoric and tactics and try to have fewer explosions in fewer homes, figuratively and literally.
I skipped over Altman's solution to this problem which strikes me as unworkable. Here it is:
It is important that the democratic process remains more powerful than companies. Laws and norms are going to change, but we have to work within the democratic process, even though it will be messy and slower than we’d like. We want to be a voice and a stakeholder, but not to have all the power.
Why is this unworkable? Because some of the competitors in the race to control AI are in countries that don't have a Democratic process at all or any concern about maintaining one. So, the worst case here isn't that Sam Altman gets the "ring of power." The worst case here is that Xi Jinping get the ring of power. And what happens then if we're still busy bickering about how to proceed safely?
Altman must know this. He's not dumb. The fact that he doesn't mention it here at all seems pretty odd.
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