An OpenAI Employee Overrode Altman's Proposed $500 Million Investment in Helion, Leading to Shareholder Push for Leadership Change

According to Dochat Beating monitoring, The Wall Street Journal published an in-depth investigation revealing an internal deadlock at the eve of the OpenAI IPO: CEO Sam Altman proposed that OpenAI invest $500 million to participate in a new funding round for the fusion startup Helion, but the staff rejected the deal after evaluation. This is one of the reasons why some shareholders have begun privately discussing removing Altman as CEO and having the board chairman Bret Taylor (former Co-CEO of Salesforce) take over.

Helion is Altman's heaviest bet outside of OpenAI, where he is one of the largest investors, with a significant portion of his personal net worth tied up in it. In 2021, he made a one-time investment of $3.75 billion, the largest personal investment he had made at the time. The funding round was originally planned to be around $10 billion with a valuation of $350 billion, whereas the company was valued at only $5.4 billion in January 2025 during the last funding round. OpenAI staff had two main concerns about the proposal. First, Altman was asking OpenAI to invest in a company in which he held a large stake and had a significant personal interest, with no direct benefit to OpenAI's business itself. Second, the staff had doubts about Helion's fusion technology. The company had promised that by 2024, the Polaris device would generate more electricity than it consumed, but it missed this milestone. Subsequently, it only vaguely stated that "the machine achieved several technological milestones" without disclosing specific data. Informants said that some employees deliberately avoided discussing the deal in Slack channels, fearing that their comments would be summoned in future litigation.

Although OpenAI declined to invest, it signed a power purchase agreement that allows it to purchase up to 50 gigawatts of power from Helion until 2035, equivalent to the power output of 25 Hoover Dams. Helion then used this agreement as a selling point for a new funding round, but the funding target has since shrunk to $250 million with a valuation of $150 billion, led by Thrive Capital (one of OpenAI's major shareholders). Altman stepped down from Helion's board of directors last month.

Altman's entanglement with OpenAI also extends to space. The WSJ first revealed that Altman himself and his husband hold shares in the rocket company Stoke Space through their family office Hydrazine. Last summer, he proposed to Stoke that OpenAI acquire it or become a controlling shareholder to build a data center in space, directly challenging Elon Musk's SpaceX. Negotiations were paused after WSJ inquired about this in December 2021. In February this year, Altman publicly called the idea of a space data center "absurd" at an event in India, surprising those involved in the negotiations. Informants said Altman is still privately pushing for a rocket launch partnership agreement this year.

Internal personnel matters are also delicate. Chief Product Officer Fidji Simo, whom Altman had hoped would take over most of the day-to-day operations post-IPO, including representing the company at quarterly performance meetings, announced this month that she is taking medical leave due to a recurrent neuroimmune disorder. A memo designated four executives to share her responsibilities, with Altman not on the list. Taylor, meanwhile, expressed support for Altman in a statement, stating that he sees "every day why Sam uniquely suits leading the company into the next phase."

Behind these conflicts lies a structural root: OpenAI originated from a nonprofit organization, and Altman has no direct equity in the company to this day. His annual salary in 2024 was only $66,000, and his wealth is highly tied to the portfolio of hundreds of startups he accumulated during his Y Combinator days. Every time he makes a move with OpenAI, he cannot avoid the question of whether he is bailing himself out of his positions, and his subordinates are now starting to respond in a legal risk manner.