The OpenAI whistleblower’s parents have called for an investigation into their child’s suspicious death

A few weeks ago, Suchir Balaji, former OpenAI researcher and whistleblower, was found dead in his San Francisco apartment. The San Francisco Medical Examiner says the cause of death was suicide, but his parents disagreed with the medical examiner’s opinion. They have demanded an FBI investigation into their son’s death.

According to the Guardian, Suchir Balaji’s parents want the FBI to investigate their son’s death. They believe that the San Francisco Police Department does not have the ability to fully investigate the case related to issues such as cybersecurity and whistleblower protection.

Suspicious death of former OpenAI whistleblower and researcher

Suchir Balaji’s mother, Poornima Ramarao, lives in Union City, about 40 miles from San Francisco. After 3 days without hearing from his son, he goes to the police and reported his son missing. Police also contacted San Francisco authorities.

When the police officers went to Suchir Balaji’s apartment, they came across his dead body. In the initial investigation, no evidence of crime was found and the medical examiner declared the cause of death to be suicide. Ramarao says it took only 40 seconds from the moment the doctor arrived to declare the cause of death a suicide. Suchir’s mother said: “Their reason is that he entered (the house) and did not come out, there was no one with him… so he shot himself.” There was a gun near him.

Balaji’s parents say their son had no history of mental illness and no suicide notes were found. The last person Sochir spoke to was his father, who had talked on the phone about going to Los Angeles for a birthday party. He says his son’s mood is good.

Balaji studied computer science at UC Berkeley and joined OpenAI in November 2020. He was working on a project called WebGPT, which, according to OpenAI co-founder John Shulman, helped pave the way for the development of ChatGPT. Balaji left OpenAI in August 2024, at the same time as Shulman, and spoke publicly about copyright infringement by AI developers, including OpenAI.

Suchir’s mother said at the ceremony held for her son: “I don’t know how I could have saved my son by teaching him to lie.” “The morals that I raised him with took his life today.”