By Ritu Jha-
OpenAI whistleblower Suchir Balaji committed suicide, the San Francisco Police and the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner reaffirmed in their final report February 14.
In the signed report covering of the investigation and toxicology studies, San Francisco Police Chief Bill Scott and Office of the Chief Medical Examiner Executive Director, David Serrano Sewell, reiterated their view that Suchir Balaji’s case is not a homicide but a suicide, The family, though, is adamant that he was murdered.
Balaji, 26, a former OpenAI employee and whistleblower, was found dead in his apartment in San Francisco. Suchir was 26. He was the potential witness in the lawsuit filed by The New York Times against OpenAI in a copyright infringement case. Balaji, who was an AI researcher at OpenAI for four years from 2020, worked on post-training (chatGPT), reasoning (o1), pretraining (gpt-4), and RL (webgpt) until he resigned. He quit claiming he was disillusioned by OpenAI’s business practices.
“If you believe what I believe, you have to just leave the company,” he told The New York Times.
The investigation report was addressed to attorneys Kevin J. Rooney and Philip J. Kearney (a former attorney of the family), and Dr. Joseph Cohen, a forensic pathologist hired by Balaji’s family to do a private autopsy.
It stated that Balaji died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head, resulting from a short fired from the front to back in a downward trajectory. He was found dead on the bathroom floor. Investigators say Balaji was standing directly before the bathroom mirror when he shot himself.
On November 27, 2024, the OCME forensic pathologist examined the body, reviewed CT imaging and performed postmortem toxicology testing, which established the presence of alcohol and amphetamine in the decedent’s blood. It is not clear if the amphetamine came from the prescribed Adderall, which does contain isomers of amphetamine. There was a wine bottle in his refrigerator and a wine glass in the sink.
The door of the fourth-floor apartment had the deadbolt engaged from within with no sign of forced entry, and the windows were set not to open beyond four inches. There were no accessible points of entry.
Balaji’s last search history included terms such as “total gray matter volume” and “white matter.” There were unrelated injuries or bruising seen.
Bajali had bought and registered the Glock pistol found at the scene, While the SFPD report says he bought it in January 2023, the OCME reports put the date at January 4, 2024.
Balaji’s mother Poornima Ramarao had told indica earlier she was not aware of him buying the gun and that he had never mentioned it. The video indica received from his mother shows blood near the bathroom door and droplets on the sink and the floor beneath it. The home was untidy and in disarray. His mother claims it was ransacked.
According to the police report, a video showed Bajali leave the elevator and go out, and shortly thereafter return with what appeared to be food to his apartment on Buchanan Street in San Francisco. There was an open and empty food box with a spoon on one of the tables.
Ramarao told indica they appreciate the work done, but added, “We believe the investigation is far from complete. They have not done a full autopsy. There was a hair found under the bathroom door. That was critical evidence they left out.”
[With Ramarao’s permission we are publishing a possibly disturbing video and screenshot of Suchir Balaji. Viewer discretion is advised,)
