OpenAI employees veto Altman's proposed $500 million investment in Helion; some shareholders privately discuss replacing the leadership.

ME News message, April 17 (UTC+8). According to the Beating monitoring, The Wall Street Journal published a lengthy investigation revealing an internal standoff on the eve of OpenAI’s IPO: CEO Sam Altman proposed that OpenAI contribute $500 million to participate in a new round of financing for the fusion startup Helion. After employees evaluated the proposal, they rejected the deal. This is also one of the reasons that some shareholders have begun privately discussing having Altman step down as CEO and having the board chair, Bret Taylor (former co-CEO of Salesforce), take over.

Helion is Altman’s heaviest bet outside of OpenAI. He is one of the company’s largest investors, with a substantial portion of his personal net worth tied up in it. In 2021, he invested $375 million in a single transaction, the largest personal investment he had made at the time. The funding round was originally planned to be about $1 billion, valuing the company at $35 billion, whereas in the company’s prior round of financing in January 2025, it was valued at only $5.4 billion.

OpenAI employees have two layers of unease about the proposal. First, Altman requires OpenAI to inject capital into a company in which he holds a large stake and whose assets are closely tied to him personally, while OpenAI’s core business itself has no direct benefit. Second, employees doubt Helion’s fusion technology. The company promised that by 2024 its Polaris device would generate more power than it consumes, but it missed that milestone. Afterward, it only made a generic statement that “the machine has reached certain technological milestones,” without disclosing specific data.

Insiders say that some employees deliberately avoid discussing the deal in Slack channels, fearing their comments could be subpoenaed later in legal proceedings. Although OpenAI refused to make the investment, it signed an electricity purchase agreement under which it can purchase up to 50 gigawatts of power from Helion through 2035—equivalent to the power generation of 25 Hoover Dams. Helion then used this contract as a selling point for the new round of financing. However, the financing target was reduced to $250 million and the valuation to $15 billion, with Thrive Capital (one of OpenAI’s major shareholders) leading the investment. Altman stepped down from his position on Helion’s board last month.

Altman’s intertwined interests with OpenAI also extend into space. WSJ first disclosed that Altman himself and his husband both hold shares in rocket company Stoke Space through their family office, Hydrazine. Last summer, he proposed that OpenAI acquire Stoke or become its controlling shareholder to build data centers in space, directly challenging Elon Musk’s SpaceX. After WSJ began asking OpenAI about the matter in December, the negotiations were paused. In February this year, at an event in India, Altman publicly called the idea of space data centers “absurd,” surprising people who had been involved in the negotiations. Insiders say Altman is still privately pushing for a rocket launch cooperation agreement this year.

Internal personnel matters are also delicate. Chief Product Officer Fidji Simo had originally been expected—by Altman—to take over most of the day-to-day operations after the IPO, including representing the company at quarterly earnings calls. But this month, she announced she would take sick leave after a recurrence of her neuroimmune disease. A memo named four executives to share responsibilities, and Altman was not on the list. In a statement, Taylor expressed support for Altman, saying that he “sees every day why Sam is uniquely suited to lead the company into the next stage.”

Behind these conflicts lies a structural root: OpenAI spun out from a nonprofit organization, and so far Altman has no direct equity in the company. In 2024, his annual salary is only $66,000, while his wealth is highly tied to a portfolio of hundreds of startups accumulated during the YC era. When he pushes OpenAI to act, the question of whether he is effectively “stepping in to pick up his own position” comes up every time. His subordinates have now begun to answer in the language of legal risk.

(Source: BlockBeats)