Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, has consistently donated to Democrat politicians for the last several years, including Kamala Harris, the now-presumptive Democrat nominee for president.
The announcement from President Joe Biden that he would not seek re-election, combined with his endorsement of Kamala Harris, has made the vice president the clear frontrunner ahead of the Democratic National Convention in August.
The announcement was met with a flurry of donations, with some reports indicating that it was the largest fundraising day of the campaign so far, beating out Trump’s boost in the hours after his attempted assassination.
According to data from Open Secrets, Sam Altman gave $5,600 to Kamala Harris in a series of donations made in 2019, when Harris was running to be the nominee in the Democratic primary. Altman has made donations to several other prominent candidates, including Elizabeth Warren, Joe Biden and Pete Buttigieg.
Saul Loeb/AFP
Before her primary run and election as vice president, Harris served as the junior senator for California, the state where Altman lives, as well as the state where OpenAI and much of America’s artificial intelligence industry is based.
In the hours after Kamala Harris was endorsed by Biden and other prominent Democrats, the party reported that there had been the biggest donor drive yet, with fundraising group ActBlue describing its “biggest fundraising day of the 2024 cycle” on Sunday.
Others reported that Harris’ campaign had raised an estimated $60 million since the vice president said she would seek the nomination in Biden’s place.
Analysis by Newsweek revealed that Altman has consistently donated to Democrat politicians since 2013 for a total of over $1 million. While many of his donations have been to local politicians in California, such as Governor Gavin Newsom, he has also given money to Democratic organizations across the country, such as the party’s operations in key swing states.
Altman donates almost exclusively to Democrats, with the sole Republican on his donation record being North Carolina congressman Patrick McHenry, who received $2,700 in 2018.
The Democratic State Central Committees in Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Georgia, states that the Democratic nominee will be aiming to lock down, have all received regular donations from Altman since 2020.
Despite these donations, Altman rarely makes public statements on politics, and uses social media primarily to discuss AI. However, he made a rare intervention in the wake of Trump’s assassination attempt, where he called on politicians to lower rhetoric and find common cause.
Newsweek contacted the Kamala Harris campaign for comment via email.
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.