OpenAI CEO Sam Altman to donate $1 million to Trump's inaugural fund
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is joining the list of U.S. tech titans donating to President-elect Donald Trump's inaugural fund, a spokesperson exclusively told Fox News Digital.
"President Trump will lead our country into the age of AI, and I am eager to support his efforts to ensure America stays ahead," Altman said in a written statement.
Altman reportedly plans on making a personal commitment of $1 million to the Presidential Inaugural Committee, as opposed to the gift coming directly from OpenAI.
The news comes on the heels of Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta Platforms and Jeff Bezos’ Amazon both announcing $1 million to the inauguration fund, in moves that allegedly work to smooth ties with the incoming commander-in-chief.
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Bezos will be donating through Amazon, the Wall Street Journal reported, while Zuckerberg promised the Meta gift while attending Trump’s Thanksgiving dinner at his Mar-a-Lago estate.
Altman, who revolutionized the artificial intelligence industry with the creation of ChatGPT, told "Fox News Sunday" earlier this month that he is looking forward to working with the incoming Trump administration, emphasizing how "super important" it is for the U.S. and its allies to lead the charge on infrastructure that will support cutting-edge A.I. development, especially in the tech race against China.
"A.I. is a little bit different than other kinds of software in that it requires massive amounts of infrastructure, power, computer chips, data centers, and we need to build that here, and we need to be able to have the best A.I. infrastructure in the world to be able to lead with the technology and the capabilities," Altman said. "I believe President-elect Trump will be very good at that."
"[I] look forward to working with [the Trump] administration on it," the tech CEO continued. "It does seem to us like this is going to be very important. It does seem like this will be one of these unusually important moments in the history of technology. And we very much believe that the United States and our allies need to lead this."
OpenAI’s leader also spoke with FOX Business’ Charles Payne days later, expanding on the importance of A.I. in America’s national security landscape.
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"This is incredibly high stakes. A.I. is here," he said, "A.I. is going to impact a lot of what we do… The United States has got to lead in A.I. innovation. This technology is going to be used by our adversaries. We’ve got to use it to help defend American troops."
Other tech tycoons who supported Trump throughout his campaign include Tesla CEO Elon Musk, Palantir Technologies co-founder Joe Lonsdale, venture capitalist David Sacks, Andreessen Horowitz founders Ben Horowitz and Marc Andreessen, and cryptocurrency exchange Gemini co-founders Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss.
FOX Business’ Stephen Sorace contributed to this report.