Ronan Farrow and Andrew Marantz just dropped a 15,000-word investigation into Sam Altman in The New Yorker. It is, without exaggeration, the most damaging portrait of a tech CEO since Elizabeth Holmes. And unlike Holmes, Altman is running the company building what he himself calls the most powerful technology in human history.

Here is what they found: 70 pages of secret memos compiled by Ilya Sutskever and sent as disappearing messages to fellow board members in late 2023. The memos include Slack messages, HR documents, and photos taken with personal phones to avoid company detection. The first item on the list of Altman patterns? "Lying."

Multiple former OpenAI employees and tech executives describe Altman as someone "unconstrained by truth" with a "sociopathic lack of concern for the consequences" of his actions. Sutskever told a fellow board member directly: "I do not think Sam is the guy who should have his finger on the button."

The timing could not be worse for OpenAI. The company is burning $85 billion a year, its CEO and CFO are reportedly at odds over IPO timing, three top executives left in a single week, and Altman has committed to spending $600 billion over five years. This profile lands like a grenade in the middle of all of it.

The piece reveals that Sutskever, who co-founded OpenAI and served as chief scientist, compiled the dossier because he believed Altman had "misrepresented facts to executives and board members" and "deceived them about internal safety protocols." The board fired Altman. Then, under enormous pressure from investors and employees, they brought him back five days later. Sutskever wavered after Brockman"s wife pleaded with him. He later said in a court deposition that he feared OpenAI would be "destroyed" without Altman.

That is the part that should chill you. The board had evidence. They acted on it. And then the gravitational pull of money, talent, and momentum overrode every safety concern that led to the firing in the first place. The nonprofit structure designed to prioritize humanity over profit? It folded in five days.

OpenAI is now valued at $852 billion and preparing to go public. The man that his own co-founder called a liar is about to become one of the wealthiest and most powerful people on the planet. Whether that concerns you probably depends on how much you think character matters when someone is building artificial superintelligence.

I have a take: it matters more than anything else. First reported by The New Yorker.