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OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman’s San Francisco home was the target of a Molotov cocktail attack on Friday, with the suspect arrested outside the company’s office after threatening to burn it down.
San Francisco police said they had arrested a 20-year-old male at about 5am on Friday after an “incendiary destructive device” was thrown at a home in the North Beach neighbourhood about an hour earlier.
OpenAI confirmed the attack had occurred and said the suspect had also “made threats” at its San Francisco headquarters, where he was then arrested. It added nobody was hurt in the two incidents. The police said the suspect was “threatening to burn down the building”.
OpenAI said: “The individual is in custody, and we’re assisting law enforcement with their investigation.” It was not immediately clear whether Altman was home at the time of the attack.
Police said the attack on Altman’s house had caused a “fire to an exterior gate”. North Beach is an upmarket neighbourhood of San Francisco to the north of its financial district that is popular with tech executives.
It is not the first time that OpenAI’s headquarters has been targeted. In November it locked down its offices after it said it had received threats from an anti-AI activist, Wired reported at the time.
Top US companies are increasingly offering security and protection benefits to top executives amid rising acts of violence against public figures.
These include the killing of conservative activist Charlie Kirk and UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, two assassination attempts on President Donald Trump and a shooting at a New York office building last year that killed senior Blackstone executive Wesley LePatner.
Silicon Valley tech groups such as Meta, Alphabet and Nvidia in particular spent millions of dollars more on security for their chief executives in 2024.
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