OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said he finds himself “politically homeless” as the Democratic party is no longer aligned with encouraging a “culture of innovation and entrepreneurship.” “I’d rather hear from candidates about how they are going to make everyone have the stuff billionaires have instead of how they are going to eliminate billionaires,” Altman wrote. That comment appears to have been in response to New York City Democratic mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani, who this week said he does not think billionaires should exist.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman posted on X Friday, saying he finds himself “politically homeless” as the Democratic party is no longer aligned with encouraging a “culture of innovation and entrepreneurship.”
Altman, whose company is a leader in artificial intelligence, made the post in celebration of the Fourth of July, saying he is “extremely proud to be an American” and believes the U.S. “is the greatest country ever on Earth.”
He used the post to share some of his political ideology, saying he believes in “techno-capitalism.”
“We should encourage people to make tons of money and then also find ways to widely distribute wealth and share the compounding magic of capitalism,” he wrote. “One doesn’t work without the other; you cannot raise the floor and not also raise the ceiling for very long.”
Altman, 40, said he’s believed this ideology since he was 20, and that Democrats were aligned with it then but have since lost the plot and have completely “moved somewhere else at this point.”
“I’d rather hear from candidates about how they are going to make everyone have the stuff billionaires have instead of how they are going to eliminate billionaires,” Altman wrote.
That comment appears to have been in response to New York City Democratic mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani, who this week said he does not think billionaires should exist.
“I don’t think we should have billionaires because, frankly, it is so much money in a moment of such inequality and ultimately what we need more of is equality across our city and across our state and across our country,” Mamdani said on NBC’s “Meet The Press.”
CNBC has reached out to Mamdani’s campaign for comment on Altman’s statement.
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