Billionaire AI Overlord Ambushed Onstage

A chorus of boos erupted when billionaire tech CEO Sam Altman was ambushed during a speaking event on Monday by a man serving him a subpoena onstage.

The OpenAI founder was interrupted during a public conversation with Golden State Warriors head coach Steve Kerr and event host Manny Yekutiel by a man who climbed onstage saying he had a subpoena for Altman.

As seen in a YouTube Shorts video shared by @friendsindeeds, the man was stopped by Yekutiel as he stepped onstage and attempted to deliver the paperwork, having mentioned the public defender’s office.

Altman did not receive the documents himself, as a security official took them away while the man was escorted offstage to a roar of jeers from the audience. In California, a person can still be served a subpoena even if they refuse to physically take it.

Sam Altman subpoenaed onstage in San Francisco — A photo shared by X user @RemmeltE shows the moment a San Francisco Public Defender attempted to serve Sam Altman a subpoena onstage. @RemmeltE via X

The man, confirmed by SFGATE to be an employee for the San Francisco Public Defender’s Office, issued the subpoena on behalf of Stop AI—a “non-violent civil resistance organization” that has frequently protested OpenAI outside its San Francisco office.

“An investigator from the San Francisco Public Defender’s Office lawfully served a subpoena on Mr. Altman because he is a potential witness in a pending criminal case,” Valerie Ibarra, a spokesperson from the public defender’s office, told SFGATE. “Our investigators first made several prior attempts to serve the subpoena at Altman’s company headquarters and via its online portal.”

Multiple members of the activist group had been arrested for blocking the doors to the tech company headquarters, and a criminal case is set for trial.

“Our public defender successfully subpoenaed Sam Altman to appear at our trial where we will be tried for non-violently blocking the front door of OpenAI on multiple occasions and blocking the road in front of their office,” the group shared in a statement posted to X on Tuesday. “All of our non-violent actions against OpenAI were an attempt to slow OpenAI down in their attempted murder of everyone and every living thing on earth.”

“This trial will be the first time in human history where a jury of normal people are asked about the extinction [sic] threat that AI poses to humanity,” the group added.

The Daily Beast spoke with Sam Kirchner, a defendant in the case, who said Altman’s race to “build this new most intelligent species on the planet” is putting the human race at risk of extinction, potentially even within the next few years.

“Our hope is that in blocking the front door of OpenAI, we get some traction on this idea that we shouldn’t be building something more intelligent than humans, and we should try to do everything in our power to stop it from being created,” Kirchner explained. “Because once it’s created, that’s it. You cannot turn that thing off if it’s going to be more intelligent than us.”

Altman’s OpenAI, currently valued at $500 billion, has committed to spending more than $1.4 trillion on data centers over the next few years—despite claiming its annual revenue will reach only $20 billion this year.

The privately traded AI powerhouse is also currently facing a litany of lawsuits in California regarding its popular yet controversial software ChatGPT, with complaints concerning the chatbot’s harmful impact on some users’ mental health.

On Thursday, Altman attempted to walk back comments made earlier this week by OpenAI CFO Sarah Friar, who told The Wall Street Journal that the company would support a federal backstop for AI chip investments.

“We do not have or want government guarantees for OpenAI data centers,” Altman shared on X. “We believe that governments should not pick winners or losers, and that taxpayers should not bail out companies that make bad business decisions.”

I would like to clarify a few things.
First, the obvious one: we do not have or want government guarantees for OpenAI datacenters. We believe that governments should not pick winners or losers, and that taxpayers should not bail out companies that make bad business decisions or…

— Sam Altman (@sama) November 6, 2025