OpenAI CEO Sam Altman's San Francisco home was targeted for the second time in less than a week after a vehicle stopped outside his Russian Hill property early Sunday and a passenger reportedly fired a round at the residence. Two suspects were arrested within the hour, and officers recovered three firearms during a follow-up search.
The San Francisco Police Department said officers responded to reports of possible gunfire in the Russian Hill neighborhood in the early hours of April 12. According to accounts from the San Francisco Standard and other local outlets, a Honda sedan pulled up near the Lombard Street side of Altman's residence, and the passenger extended a hand out the window and appeared to fire a single round. Security personnel on site heard the shot, and surveillance cameras captured the vehicle's license plate.
Arrests and charges
Officers located the vehicle and detained the occupants on the 2000 block of Taylor Street, a short distance from Altman's home. Police identified the suspects as Amanda Tom, 25, and Muhamad Tarik Hussein, 23, and booked both on charges of negligent discharge. A subsequent search of their residence turned up three firearms, according to the SFPD account reported by local outlets.
No injuries were reported. Altman, who founded OpenAI and has become one of the most visible figures in the global AI race, was not harmed, and police have not publicly described a motive for the Sunday incident.
Second incident in less than a week
The shooting came just two days after a separate attack on the same property. On April 10, police arrested a 20-year-old identified as Daniel Alejandro Moreno-Gama, who is accused of throwing an incendiary device at an exterior gate of Altman's home around 4 a.m. and later threatening to burn down OpenAI's San Francisco headquarters. OpenAI said no one was hurt in that attack, and the suspect faces charges that local reports describe as including arson of an inhabited structure and attempted murder.
Reports on the Molotov cocktail incident have noted that Moreno-Gama had previously participated in a Discord server linked to PauseAI, a nonprofit that advocates for temporarily halting frontier AI model development. Police have not publicly drawn any connection between Moreno-Gama and the two people arrested in Sunday's shooting.
A tense moment for OpenAI and its leadership
Two back-to-back security incidents at the home of its chief executive mark an unusual and unsettling moment for OpenAI, which is in the middle of a historically aggressive growth phase — expanding its workforce, negotiating multibillion-dollar infrastructure deals, and preparing for what many expect will be a closely watched public offering. Altman himself has become a focal point for both admiration and backlash as debates over AI safety, job displacement, and concentration of power in frontier labs intensify.
For now, the immediate questions are narrow: what motivated Sunday's shooting, whether the two incidents are connected in any way, and what additional security measures OpenAI and local authorities will put in place around its leadership. San Francisco police said the investigation is ongoing.
