What Really Happened to Suchir Balaji?
Police dismissed the OpenAI whistleblower’s death as a suicide. His parents say there’s more going on.
On November 26, 2024, Poornima Ramarao’s world collapsed. “3:20 p.m. was the worst moment of my life,” she said. After being unable to reach her only child for days, she had been waiting outside his apartment in San Francisco for hours as police investigated. Instead, a white van arrived and told her there was a dead body in the building.
By 4:00 p.m., police declared the death of her son, Suchir Balaji — a 26-year-old OpenAI researcher who had spent the last months of his life warning the world about the dangers of artificial intelligence (AI) — a suicide. Only five days earlier, Balaji had celebrated his birthday with friends on Catalina Island and Los Angeles.
Now, months after Balaji’s death, questions remain and more continue to surface.