Former OpenAI researcher found dead at age 26

Former OpenAI researcher Suchir Balaji was found dead in his San Francisco apartment in recent weeks, the San Jose Mercury News reported Saturday.

Balaji was found dead inside his Buchanan Street apartment on November 26, the report said.

According to his LinkedIn profile, the University of California, Berkeley graduate had worked at OpenAI for nearly four years.

Balaji, 26, had left the Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT)-backed startup earlier this year and publicly raised concerns about the company’s violation of U.S. copyright laws while developing its massively popular ChatGPT chatbot.

In an interview with the New York Times in October, Balaji said that he left OpenAI because he no longer wanted to contribute to technologies that he believed would bring society more harm than benefit.

“If you believe what I believe, you have to just leave the company,” Balaji said to NYT.

“On 11/26/24 at approximately 1:15 pm officers responded to a residence on the 100 block of Buchanan St. for a wellbeing check. Officers and medics arrived on scene and located a deceased adult male from what appeared to be a suicide,” said the San Francisco Police Department said in a statement. “No evidence of foul play was found during the initial investigation.”

The world’s second-highest valued startup is currently involved in legal disputes across the globe over allegations of use of copyrighted data for training its artificial intelligence models. OpenAI has denied copyright infringement.

The AI startup has entered into licensing arrangements with news organizations like the Financial Times for use of copyrighted content.

“We are devastated to learn of this incredibly sad news and our hearts go out to Suchir’s loved ones during this difficult time,” said OpenAI in a statement.