OpenAI’s president is a Trump mega-donor

OpenAI co-founder and longtime chairman Greg Brockman didn’t just make a run-of-the-mill donation to the main pro-Trump super PAC: Together, donations from him and his wife Anna in September 2025 tied the largest of all, totaling $25 million to “MAGA Inc.”, according to a recent filing. The Brockmans’ donations made up nearly a quarter of the six-month fundraising cycle.

It’s the latest in a series of examples of tech executives cozying up to President Trump’s administration, coming as the administration moves to aggressively support the AI ​​industry and dismantle state-level regulations that companies like OpenAI have largely opposed. OpenAI did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Brockman’s multimillion-dollar donation is not the only example of his spending heavily, under his own name, on lobbying efforts aimed at dismantling potential regulation of the AI ​​industry. The pro-AI super PAC “Leading the Future,” of which Brockman is a major backer, purchased ads targeting New York State Assembly member Alex Bores — a co-sponsor of New York’s RAISE Act, which was watered down at the last minute after coordinated lobbying efforts.

Although news of the Brockmans’ donations first broke earlier this month, there has been a resurgence of online discussion following the recent death of Alex Pretti in Minneapolis, where federal agents fatally shot two people during an anti-immigration crackdown. Tech workers across the industry, including several OpenAI employees, signed a letter calling on their CEOs to cancel all contracts with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and publicly condemn the department’s actions. “When Trump threatened to send the National Guard to San Francisco in October, tech industry executives called the White House,” the petition website says. “It worked: Trump reversed course. Today, we’re calling on our CEOs to get back on the phone.”

However, since Trump’s inauguration, one technology leader after another has donated to his inauguration fund, gathered en masse at Mar-a-Lago to meet him, or attended White House dinners alongside him. In return, they got an administration willing to roll back consumer protections and technology regulations. Trump’s AI action plan resurrected a failed Republican attempt to bar states from adopting AI regulations, much to the delight of tech executives. The new provision states that “AI is far too important to be stifled by bureaucracy at this early stage” and that the government “should not allow federal AI-related funds to be directed to states with burdensome AI regulations that waste those funds,” but it also should not “interfere with the rights of states to pass prudent laws that are not unduly restrictive on innovation.” Targets of the moratorium include SB 53, the landmark AI transparency bill that California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed in September despite lobbying against it by many tech companies, including OpenAI.

In 2019, Brockman co-authored a blog post explaining how difficult it is to “change powerful systems…once they have been deployed” and that it is “important to consider AGI’s security and policy risks before its creation.” Six years later, his messages have changed tone, emphasizing the importance of the “approach[ing] emerging technology with a growth mindset. In a New Year’s post on He added that “it’s great to see the willingness of the President and his administration to engage directly with the AI ​​community.”