An official autopsy has found no evidence of foul play in the death of 26-year-old Suchir Balaji. The OpenAI whistleblower’s death late last year sparked a torrent of conspiracy theories alleging he was assassinated in retaliation for agreeing to testify against the company in a lawsuit.
Balaji was found dead Nov. 26 in his Lower Haight apartment. The San Francisco medical examiner quickly ruled it a suicide but did not release an official report until Friday.
In the absence of an official autopsy, a coalition of right-wing pundits, conspiracy-minded journalists, crypto enthusiasts, and even Democratic politicians have questioned the circumstances of his death — and, at times, amplified misinformation about the case.
Balaji’s parents have perhaps been the biggest advocates of the theories, telling The Standard in January that their son was murdered at the behest of OpenAI. This month, they sued the city to release his death records.
The official autopsy concluded that Balaji died by suicide.
Nearly two years before his death, Balaji purchased and registered the Glock pistol he used to shoot himself in the forehead, the report says. He was found lying on the bathroom floor of his apartment in front of the mirror and had recently researched brain anatomy on his desktop computer.
The only entrance to Balaji’s fourth-floor apartment was dead-bolted from the inside when police arrived for a wellness check. An intruder could not have entered through the unit’s windows, which open approximately 4 inches, the report says.
Investigators found “no evidence of forced entry to the unit or disturbance within the unit,” and no indication from video and key-fob records that anybody else entered.
The report acknowledges that Balaji’s parents said their son had no history of suicidal ideation. But it notes that his mother, Poornima Ramarao, told investigators that he “had experienced significant stress recently” and “had quit his job and was actively seeking new employment.”
His father, Balaji Ramamurthy, previously told The Standard that Suchir had “fear and anxiousness” after blowing the whistle on OpenAI’s alleged copyright violations in a story in The New York Times.
“These facts, taken together, support that Mr. Balaji was alone at the time of the incident,” the medical examiner and San Francisco Police Department wrote in a joint letter to attorneys representing Balaji’s parents.
Joseph Goethals, the family’s attorney, did not immediately return a request for comment.
In December, Ramarao announced on X that the family had commissioned a private autopsy that “doesn’t confirm cause of death stated by police.” That drew a comment from Elon Musk declaring that “this doesn’t seem like a suicide.”
Ramarao later told The Standard that the secondary autopsy proved her son was shot in the back of the head from an angle at which he could not have shot himself, and that it was “cold-blooded murder.” At the time, the family declined to provide a copy of the autopsy, and Goethals disputed Ramarao’s claim, saying he “would not characterize it as conclusively proving murder.”
Balaji’s parents have criticized San Francisco officials and questioned the circumstances of their son’s death in interviews with U.S. and foreign media outlets. In January, former Fox News pundit Tucker Carlson released an interview with Ramarao that ran for more than one hour.
That same day, U.S. Rep. Ro Khanna called for a “full and transparent investigation into the death” by the FBI, and San Francisco Supervisor Jackie Fielder said she was “concerned about the circumstances surrounding Suchir’s death.”
After the conspiracy theories emerged on X, Fielder amplified a post claiming that the SFPD had “reopened” its investigation. That was misleading; the department never closed its case, a spokesperson told The Standard.
Representatives for Khanna and Fielder did not immediately return requests for comment.