Suicide or murder? Why Sam Altman and Elon Musk are clashing over whistleblower Suchir Balaji’s death

For the first time since the death of whistleblower Suchir Balaji, OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman has publicly addressed the case. His comments, given during a combative interview with former Fox News anchor Tucker Carlson, set off a storm that drew in Elon Musk and reopened questions about the Indian-origin researcher’s mysterious end.

The interview began with Carlson pressing Altman about Balaji’s earlier allegations against OpenAI. “You had complaints from one programmer who said you guys were basically stealing people’s stuff and not paying them, and then he wound up murdered. What was that?” Carlson asked.

Altman called the death “also a great tragedy” and added, “He committed suicide.” When Carlson followed up, “Do you think he committed suicide?” Altman replied, “I really do. He was like a friend of mine. I spent a lot of time trying to, you know, read everything I could, as I’m sure you and others did too, about what happened. It looks like a suicide to me.”

Carlson pushed back. “Why does it look like a suicide?” he asked. Altman answered, “It was a gun he had purchased.”

Carlson said on air, “He was definitely murdered, I think,” and listed details he believed were suspicious. “There were signs of a struggle, of course. The surveillance camera, the wires had been cut. He had just ordered takeout food, come back from a vacation with his friends on Catalina Island. No indication at all that he was suicidal.”

As the exchange grew tense, Altman remarked, “I haven’t done too many interviews where I’ve been accused of murder.” Carlson continued to question “how a suicide could involve signs of a struggle and blood in two rooms,” adding, “I don’t understand how the authorities could just kind of dismiss that as a suicide. I think it’s weird.” Altman replied, “You understand how this sounds like an accusation?”

The clip of the interview quickly went viral. Hours later, Elon Musk, who co-founded OpenAI but is now one of its most prominent critics, amplified Carlson’s view. Posting on X, Musk wrote simply, “He was murdered.” Musk has in recent years accused OpenAI and Altman of weak ethics and lack of transparency.

Who was Suchir Balaji?

Balaji, 26, was a rising AI researcher of Indian origin. According to his LinkedIn profile he studied at the University of California, Berkeley, interned with OpenAI and Scale AI, and then joined OpenAI full-time. He worked on projects including WebGPT and the pretraining of GPT-4 before moving to the reasoning and post-training teams for ChatGPT.

After four years at the lab, Balaji left, citing ethical concerns about AI’s societal impact. In October 2024 he spoke to The New York Times about OpenAI’s handling of copyright issues. He had also written a blog post questioning whether using copyrighted data to train large models was ethical or legal. Reports later said he was named in a court filing related to a copyright lawsuit against the company.

What do we know about his death?

Balaji was found dead in his San Francisco apartment in November 2024. The San Francisco Police Department and the city’s medical examiner concluded that he died from a single self-inflicted gunshot wound. Their reports noted the apartment was locked from the inside with no signs of forced entry and that toxicology tests found alcohol and amphetamines in his system.

His parents reject the official conclusion, calling it a “cold-blooded murder.” They say an independent autopsy revealed a second gunshot wound and evidence of a struggle. They also deny he was depressed and have released CCTV footage showing him acting “normal” and picking up dinner on the day of his death.

A story still unfolding

Altman’s televised defence of the suicide finding and Musk’s immediate counter-claim of murder have ensured that the case remains in the public eye. The conflicting narratives now span law enforcement, grieving parents, a controversial talk-show host and two of the most powerful figures in the AI industry.