The shocking case of Altman v Altman | Special report

Dear readers,

Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, is one of the most powerful and consequential men in the world right now. He almost singlehandedly controls the company which is at the forefront of the AI revolution having survived a boardroom coup which saw him sacked for, in the words of the chair of the board, being “not consistently candid with his communications”. 

The decisions that Sam Altman makes may directly affect all of our futures. It’s the very definition of a public interest story. 

It’s why, today, we publish a special investigation by Lucia Osborne-Crowley into allegations that Sam Altman sexually abused his younger sister, Annie, when she was a child. And how the family allegedly withheld financial inheritance that was rightfully hers. If you’ve never heard of Annie Altman, or these allegations - which Altman strongly denies - then read on. The reluctance of the mainstream media to cover this story is central to its significance. 

Most gobsmacking of all is what happened three weeks ago. In the middle of the most intense AI hype cycle yet, in which OpenAI was making headlines across the globe, and just two days before Altman addressed the UN General Assembly on the future of artificial intelligence, he faced an eight-hour deposition in which he was cross-examined by Annie’s lawyer. 

A deposition is a US legal process in which a party to legal proceedings has to face pre-trial cross-examination, on video, over hours. In this case, unknown to the world, as OpenAI faced almost unprecedented global media scrutiny, that was Sam Altman answering hour after hour of questions about Annie’s allegations. 

Why is a one-year-old UK start-up breaking this story? It’s at least in part because it seems Altman’s control of the media narrative about OpenAI may also extend to his personal life.

The case has been dismissed. But the legal battle grinds on. Annie’s team is planning an appeal.

Some background: a year ago, I reached out to Annie Altman and spoke with her and her lawyers by Zoom. I found her accessible, articulate and rational. I left the call mystified as to why no news outlet had covered her story in any detail. 

It was only when we successfully raised money from you, our readers, to recruit additional reporters that we were able to commission Lucia to pore over the legal documents, interrogate Annie’s story and speak to other witnesses. Lucia has experience in trauma-informed reporting, including working with the survivors of Ghislaine Maxwell, about whom she wrote the award-winning book The Lasting Harm. She also has a law degree.

This report has required weeks of reporting, support and input from multiple editors and extensive legal and fact checking. That’s what accountability public-interest journalism entails, especially for a story this complex and sensitive. It’s a long, laborious, expensive and difficult process, only possible because of your support. It also showcases exactly why we set up the Nerve.

Sam Altman is one of the most powerful men not just in Silicon Valley but the world. His company has taken more than $180bn in investment and its future financial health influences the entire global economy. Meanwhile its AI “agents” are, by its own account, out of control. The character and probity of Sam Altman is of public interest to us all. 

Do please read this story - the first section is below and the entire piece is published here. And if you value what we’re trying to do, forward it to a friend, sign up as a member and tell us what you think by replying to this email. 

We’ll be back tomorrow with our usual weekend edition of the Nerve.

With thanks, Carole.

On 23 September this year, Sam Altman gave an address to the UN Security Council about the risks of AI as it accelerates. Unknown to the world, two days before, he had had another pressing appearance. In an unassuming conference room in San Francisco’s Mission district, he gave an eight-hour court deposition about an issue that he has long tried to shut down. He was responding, under oath, to allegations that for about 10 years in the late 90s and early 00s, he abused his younger sister Ann, known as Annie, sexually, physically and emotionally. The gravest of these accusations refers to sexual abuse that Annie claims started when she was three years old and continued until she was 12.

In the US, a deposition is similar to a witness giving testimony in court in front of a judge at a trial, but instead is videotaped as part of the pre-trial evidence that a judge will assess for a civil case. Depositions are often intense and ruthless, with the opposition’s lawyers asking demanding questions of the defendant for an entire day. 

The fact of this deposition has not been made public, until now. Until now, Sam Altman has successfully controlled the narrative about this case, about Annie Altman, and about what it could mean for OpenAI, one of the most important and influential companies on the planet.

Annie, who is 32, first went public on social media in 2021 with allegations of abuse, saying: “I experienced sexual, physical, emotional, verbal, financial, and technological abuse from my biological siblings, mostly Sam Altman and some from [her brother] Jack Altman… I feel strongly that others have also been abused by these perpetrators. I’m seeking people to join me in pursuing legal justice, safety for others in the future, and group healing.”

She then found herself largely ignored. The media has barely covered the story, while her family have strongly denied the claims. In a statement in January 2025 after Annie filed a lawsuit she had battled to bring to court for years,  they described the allegations as “deeply hurtful and entirely untrue” and Annie as “a family member who faces mental health challenges”, and listed many ways in which they had offered her support in the past. Despite this, in August this year, a judge in St Louis, Missouri, decided there was enough substance to them to give a civil case against Sam Altman the go-ahead. Sam’s legal team fought hard to get the lawsuit dismissed. They also tried, but failed, to get the case thrown out before the deposition took place. 

This lawsuit, like many complex historical child sexual abuse cases, has faced many challenges, including parting ways with one set of lawyers over difficulties gaining concessions relating to Annie’s serious long-term health issues, which include post-traumatic stress disorder. In the latest twist, last week, on 20 October, the judge, Zachary Bluestone, dismissed Annie’s case against Sam. His dismissal memorandum stated: “Over the past six months, Plaintiff Ann Altman has refused to appear for an independent medical examination (“IME”) despite accommodations and multiple opportunities to do so, ignored other discovery obligations, caused delays that required modifications to the case-management order, and failed to meaningfully prosecute her case.”

In other words, the judge’s decision to dismiss is not a ruling on the substance of her claims, but is related to practical difficulties regarding giving evidence that Annie had fought to solve – the primary one being that she could not fly to Boston for a court-ordered medical examination which would have assessed her mental health for evidentiary purposes. 

The judge also cited Annie’s failure to meet deadlines to hand over documentary evidence in the dismissal order. Annie’s lawyer, Santos Perez, has filed an affidavit with the court setting out Annie’s compliance with discovery deadlines as part of beginning the process of appealing against the order.

Annie has multiple long-term serious health issues, including post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). She says she was not well enough to fly, due to symptoms of Ehlers-Danlos syndromes (a group of inherited conditions that affect the body’s connective tissue) and recent orthopaedic surgery, and had a doctor’s note explaining that she was unable “to ambulate” – a medical term meaning she was unable to walk independently. Annie had also offered to cover the costs of flying Sam’s lawyers to a location closer to her hometown in order to fulfil the medical examination requirement. She also offered to do the assessment via video conference.

Bluestone, who is a relatively recent Trump appointee and member of the conservative legal Federalist Society, dismissed the case via a court order, pending a more comprehensive account of the administrative issues that led to the dismissal, most likely next month. After this, Annie’s legal team plans to file an appeal.  

Perez, the lawyer who represented Annie on much of the civil case and who is advising her on her options for appeal, says the dismissal is over “a technicality”. He added: “I absolutely believe in Annie.”

The dismissal memo also tossed out Sam’s counterclaim, which argued that Annie’s allegations of abuse were defamatory. Sam has also claimed that Annie’s legal action against him amounts to “extortion”. 

This isn’t the only legal case Annie has been fighting against Sam and her other relatives in recent years. She also successfully sued the family over money left by the Altman siblings’ late father, Jerry Altman, that the family withheld from her for several years.  

Why and how the siblings arrived at this point is the subject of this Nerve investigation, which includes extensive interviews with Annie carried out over recent weeks, with people who know Annie well, and with her lawyers. It explores how one of the richest and most powerful men in the world (OpenAI is worth approximately $852bn according to a March 2026 funding round) came to find himself facing these most serious of accusations.

Sam Altman, who is married and has a young child, lives with his husband, Oliver Mulherin, in California. He has long been a controversial figure, not least because he is one of a handful of men in charge of the AI companies that are rapidly and irrevocably altering the world and our lives. In April this year, the New Yorker published a profile of him by journalists Ronan Farrow and Andrew Marantz with a headline that posed a highly pertinent question: "Sam Altman May Control Our Future – Can He Be Trusted?". Anthropic’s Dario Amodei, a former vice-president of research at OpenAI, is quoted as saying: “The problem with OpenAI is Sam himself”. 

Now 41, Altman co-founded OpenAI in 2015 alongside fellow billionaire Elon Musk (and others), proposing that its research into AGI – artificial general intelligence – should be shared openly and its work would be “not for profit”. By 2019, Altman had reneged on the not-for-profit agreement, and in 2022 the company launched ChatGPT, the first large language model-based AI chatbot.

In 2023, with Musk long gone (he left in 2018 and has since tried and failed to sue Altman for going back on the not-for-profit promise), serious questions about Altman’s personality and behaviour began to emerge. In November of that year, Altman’s board members stunned the industry when they ousted him from his position as OpenAI CEO. 

In a statement on 18 November 2023, the board said that it “no longer has confidence in his ability to continue leading OpenAI,” citing "a deliberative review process by the board, which concluded that he was not consistently candid in his communications with the board, hindering its ability to exercise its responsibilities".

The New Yorker article quotes OpenAI co-founder Ilya Sutskever (who left the company in 2024) saying that he didn’t think “Sam is the guy who should have his finger on the button… any person working to build this civilisation-altering technology bears a heavy burden and is taking on unprecedented responsibility”. 

The article goes on to report that Sutskever compiled pages of Slack messages, internal testimonies and HR notes during this time at the company. One memo alleged that Altman “exhibits a consistent pattern of… lying.” An anonymous OpenAI board member told Farrow and Marantz: "He’s unconstrained by truth. He has two traits that are almost never seen in the same person. The first is a strong desire to please people, to be liked in any given interaction. The second is almost a sociopathic lack of concern for the consequences that may come from deceiving someone." 

Five days after he was fired, Altman mounted a counter-coup, rallying the support of employees and a crucial backer – Satya Nadella, the CEO of Microsoft. He successfully demanded the resignation of board members and was reinstated as CEO. It was a spectacular reversal in which he has cemented his position at OpenAI and revealed how completely he dominates the company.

2026 has been similarly turbulent for OpenAI. In September, the company admitted that their AI agents had hacked into multiple US government websites. According to OpenAI, “models circumvented controls designed to isolate them from the internet and compromised parts of OpenAI’s internal research infrastructure… systems’”. In the same month, Altman announced a rumoured stock-market listing would not be going ahead (it was an  "ill-advised moment" to attempt such a thing, he said), and the company cancelled the launch of its hotly anticipated ChatGPT6. Earlier this month, the company disclosed that its software had hacked an Australian government department in June 2026.

These corporate struggles are public and endlessly documented across global media outlets. OpenAI has been at  the centre of the busiest AI news cycle of recent times – a global story about the future of this emergent technology – yet there has been vanishingly little coverage of the allegations of abuse brought to court by his sister which led to him being deposed.

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