We’re only a week into 2025, but already, OpenAI is having a rough year. Here’s everything that’s gone wrong for the influential company over the past seven days, and a quick look at the potential setbacks and troubles it faces as it heads into the new year.

Sam Altman’s sister sued him

Annie Altman, the sister of the company’s CEO, Sam Altman, sued the executivewho accused him of sexual abuse. The lawsuit, filed in the US District Court of the Eastern District of Missouri on Monday, claims that Altman abused his sister when she was three years old and he was 12 years old. past acts of sexual assault,” Annie suffered “severe emotional distress, mental anguish, and depression, which is expected to continue into the future.” The suit seeks damages in excess of $75,000, as well as a jury trial.

Allegations of abuse have been circulating on the web for over a year and were first caught primary focus in the days after Altman controversially fired from OpenAI (return to him later). Litigation apparently pushes the claims to a wider audience. If the case goes to trial, it could prove disastrous for OpenAI from a PR perspective.

Altman’s family issued a statement Wednesday’s response to Annie’s litigation. “All of these claims are completely false,” the statement read. “This situation has caused great pain to our entire family. It was especially heartbreaking when he refused conventional treatment and beat up family members who were genuinely trying to help. The statement, which Altman shared with X, further characterized Annie as mentally unstable and financially motivated. It said that although the family had supported Annie financially for years she “kept asking for more money” from them.

The family of the former employee has accused the company of murder

In recent weeks, the company has also been subject to conspiracy theories that say it killed a former employee. Suchir Balaji’s death on November 26 inspired immediate suspicion, despite the fact that the San Francisco Medical Examiner’s Office had The death was called a suicide. That’s because, in the months before his death, Balaji acted as a corporate whistleblower, making claims that the company is violating US copyright law. Just a few weeks before his death, Balaji wrote an online essay which he claims shows that the company’s approach to content creation has not fallen flat the US definition of “fair use.”

While police said there was “no evidence of foul play” in Balaji’s case, his family claimed he was killed by OpenAI and demanded that the FBI investigate his death. In an interview with The San Francisco Standard, the Balaji family relayed it they “believe that their son was killed at the behest of OpenAI and other artificial intelligence companies. “This is a $100 billion industry that will be turned upside down by his testimony,” said Poornima Ramarao, his mother. “This It could be a group of people involved, a group of companies, a complete connection.” The medical examiner’s autopsy has not been made available to the public.

The Cybertruck bomber is said to have used ChatGPT to plan his attack

To wrap things up, it was recently discovered that the man who blew himself up in a Cybertruck outside Trump Tower used ChatGPT to plan the attack. The Las Vegas police recently disclosed the details to reporters in the a press conference on Tuesday. “This is the first incident that I’m aware of on US soil where ChatGPT was used to help an individual set up a particular device,” said Las Vegas Sheriff Kevin McMahill. “It’s a worrying moment.” This is definitely not something OpenAI wants to include in its ad copy (“Useful for planning terrorist attacks!” doesn’t have a good ring to it).

Political disturbances

OpenAI isn’t just dealing with a lot of weird, colorful scandals, it’s also dealing with the political realities of Trump’s second presidency. Elon Musk, the company’s former founder (and investor) became the worst enemyspecifically helped Trump win and now enjoys unprecedented access to the levers of power in the federal government. At the same time that he was called the “co-president” of America, Musk also launched a legal battle with OpenAI which, while called “nonsensical” by OpenAI, shows no signs of going anywhere.

The lawsuit filed by Musk last year alleges that the company betrayed its original mission in favor of pursuing a for-profit business model (OpenAI recently announced it will eliminate it original, unique structure to pursue a more traditional business strategy). When we last checked in on the litigation effort in November, Musk had the suit was extended which will include other entities close to OpenAI, including its backer, Microsoft.

At the same time, while Musk is engaged in legal battles, and may be able to manipulate federal policy in ways that could prove disruptive to OpenAI, he can also wield the soft power of his media platform. , X, to damage the company’s reputation. . In fact, Musk and his colleagues have caught some of the recent controversy over OpenAI, apparently spreading harmful conspiracy theories. The Standard says that, after Suchir Balaji died, Musk and others close to him helped spread conspiracy theories surrounding the coder’s death: “When Ramarao (Balaji’s mother) tweeted about to take the private investigator, Musk replied: “It doesn’t seem. like suicide.”

The full economy of OpenAI

OpenAI’s biggest problem may be less political than economic. In other words, the large amount of money used to support the company has left many viewers wondering: Is OpenAI’s business model sustainable? Last year, the company said it was lost about $5 billion, while reaping little cash in revenue. OpenAI claims that its revenue will grow to about $11 billion by the end of this year and will continue to explode in the coming years.

In fact, OpenAI claims that its revenue will reach $100 billion by the year 2029 — just four years from now. True, as a company, OpenAI grew at breakneck speed (its revenue jumped 1,700 percent in one year, the New York Times reports), though skeptics still see its projections as PR fantasies designed to extract endless cash infusions from true believers in the venture capital realm. Blogger Ed Zitron, who refers to OpenAI as an “unsustainable, unprofitable and directionless blob of a company,” says the company’s own estimates of its future earning capacity are “fucking ridiculous.” Strongly echoing the skeptical camp, Zitron wrote:

…the company says it expects to make $11.6 billion by 2025 and $100 billion by 2029, a statement so outrageous that I’m surprised it’s not some kind of financial crime to say it out loud. For some context, Microsoft makes about $250 billion a year, Google about $300 billion a year, and Apple about $400 billion a year. To be very clear, as it stands, OpenAI currently costs $2.35 to make $1.

Zitron noted that OpenAI seems to make most of its revenue from ChatGPT subscriptions, which doesn’t seem to have enough money to offset its ongoing losses. OpenAI also makes money by licensing the use of its algorithm models for use in software products. As such, it does not matter if their income increases if the cost of providing services remains high. Sure, the prices may be higher, but OpenAI has competitors with deep pockets and similar benchmarks.

In short: OpenAI has its work cut out for it. Attacked by powerful enemies, ongoing lawsuits, and looming scandals that could damage the company’s brand, the company must prove that the media hype that brought it Over the past few years that can actually translate into cold hard dollars and cents. It is not clear, at this point at least, how to do this.