PULSE POINTS

❓WHAT HAPPENED: OpenAI CEO Sam Altman says he feels politically homeless, lamenting that the Democratic Party has abandoned its support of a “culture of innovation and entrepreneurship,” embracing a radical socialist ideology pushed by figures like Zohran Mamdani instead.

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👤WHO WAS INVOLVED: Sam Altman, Zohran Mamdani, and the Democratic Party.

📍WHEN & WHERE: Altman leveled his criticism in a post on X (formerly Twitter) in July 2025.

💬KEY QUOTE: “So now I am politically homeless. But that’s fine; I care much, much more about being American than any political party.” — Sam Altman

🎯IMPACT: The OpenAI CEO joins a growing number of wealthy Democrat donors who are reconsidering their allegiance to the party in the face of the growing influence of radical figures like New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani and New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, says the Democratic Party no longer fosters a “culture of innovation and entrepreneurship,” leaving him feeling “politically homeless.” In a post on X (formerly Twitter), the artificial intelligence (AI) mogul explained that he was drawn to the party in his twenties during what he described as an embrace of “techno-capitalism” under Barack Obama.

“We should encourage people to make tons of money and then also find ways to widely distribute wealth and share the compounding magic of capitalism. One doesn’t work without the other; you cannot raise the floor and not also raise the ceiling for very long,” Altman wrote in the post, seemingly in response to New York City Democratic mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani—a self-described socialist—who recently declared that billionaires should not exist.

The OpenAI CEO lamented that Democrats, at one time, seemed “reasonably aligned” with a “culture of innovation and entrepreneurship.” However, Altman said he now believes that the party “los[t] the plot when I was 30, and [has] completely… moved somewhere else at this point.”

“So now I am politically homeless. But that’s fine; I care much, much more about being American than any political party,” Altman. The billionaire added: “I’d rather hear from candidates about how they are going to make everyone have the stuff billionaires have instead of how they are going to eliminate billionaires.”

The mayoral candidacy of Mamdani, a foreign-born follower of Shia Islam’s extreme “Twelver” sect, has sent shockwaves through the Democratic Party, with a number of its wealthier donors considering backing incumbent Mayor Eric Adams‘s independent re-election bid.

Image by World Economic Forum / Benedikt von Loebell.

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