OpenAI is facing new scrutiny over the way its employment and exit agreements handled whistleblower rights. Anonymous whistleblowers, through lawyers, have accused the company of placing illegal limits on communications with government regulators, according to a letter obtained by The Washington Post.
The letter was sent to Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) chair Gary Gensler. It refers to a separate, formal complaint asking the SEC to investigate OpenAI’s severance, non-disparagement, and non-disclosure agreements.
What the whistleblowers allege
The core allegation is that OpenAI’s agreements went beyond ordinary confidentiality rules and interfered with protected communications. The letter says the agreements applied pressure to both employees and investors, not only employees leaving the company.
According to the letter, the agreements restricted communications with the SEC about securities violations, addressed whistleblower incentives and compensation, and required notice to the company before communicating with government regulators.
“The agreements prohibited and discouraged both employees and investors from communicating with the SEC concerning securities violations, forced employees to waive their rights to whistleblower incentives and compensation, and required employees to notify the company of communication with government regulators,” the letter says.
The letter also says the SEC has been given evidence that “OpenAI’s prior NDAs violated the law by requiring its employees to sign illegally restrictive contracts to obtain employment, severance payments, and other financial consideration.”
Those claims, if investigated by the SEC, would put the focus on the legal effect of OpenAI’s internal paperwork. The complaint described in the letter is not only about whether employees could speak publicly. It is specifically about whether employees and investors could communicate with the SEC without company-imposed barriers.
The agreements at the center of the complaint
The letter points to several types of agreements: severance agreements, non-disparagement agreements, and non-disclosure agreements. Each type can affect what a worker believes they are allowed to say after joining or leaving a company.
In this case, the whistleblowers allege that OpenAI’s agreements created restrictions around communications with government regulators. The letter says these restrictions appeared in contracts tied to employment, severance payments, and other financial consideration.
The distinction matters because whistleblower systems depend on people being able to raise concerns with regulators. If an agreement tells a worker that they must notify the company before contacting regulators, or that they are giving up potential whistleblower incentives, that can affect whether the person feels free to report concerns.
The source article does not say that the SEC has reached a conclusion. It says the formal complaint asks the SEC to investigate. That leaves the immediate issue as an allegation brought by anonymous whistleblowers and their lawyers, not a final regulatory finding.
OpenAI’s response and earlier exit agreement criticism
OpenAI did not immediately respond to TechCrunch’s request for comment. A company spokesperson told The Post that OpenAI’s whistleblower policy “protects employees’ rights to make protected disclosures.”
The new letter follows earlier criticism of OpenAI’s employee exit agreement. Earlier this year, that agreement was criticized over provisions that would reportedly have stripped former employees of their vested equity if they refused to sign the document or violated their NDAs.
CEO Sam Altman later said he was “very sorry.” He also said the company had “never clawed anything back” and was “already in the process of fixing the standard exit paperwork.”
That earlier controversy is important context for the new allegations because both issues concern the same broad area: how OpenAI’s paperwork shapes what employees and former employees believe they can do. The latest complaint, however, is narrower in one important way. It focuses on communications with government regulators and rights tied to whistleblower activity.
Why Congress is watching
A spokesperson for Senator Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) confirmed to TechCrunch that The Post obtained a copy of the letter from Senator Grassley’s office. Copies of the letter were sent to Congress.
Grassley framed the issue as part of Congress’s responsibility to oversee risks linked to artificial intelligence. His statement emphasized that whistleblowers may be central to that work.
“Monitoring and mitigating the threats posed by AI is a part of Congress’s constitutional responsibility to protect our national security, and whistleblowers will be essential to that task,” Grassley said in a statement. “OpenAI’s policies and practices appear to cast a chilling effect on whistleblowers’ right to speak up and receive due compensation for their protected disclosures.”
Grassley also said that if the federal government is going to stay “one step ahead of artificial intelligence, OpenAI’s nondisclosure agreements must change.”
The congressional angle gives the complaint a broader significance. The issue is not only an internal employment matter at one AI company. As presented in the letter and Grassley’s statement, it is also about whether people inside powerful AI companies can report concerns to public officials without fear of losing rights, compensation, or financial consideration.
What happens next
The immediate question is whether the SEC investigates the complaint described in the letter. The source article does not state that the agency has taken action, only that lawyers representing anonymous whistleblowers sent the letter to Gary Gensler and that the SEC has been provided with evidence.
For OpenAI, the dispute adds pressure around its non-disclosure agreements, severance terms, and whistleblower policy. The company’s spokesperson told The Post that its policy protects protected disclosures, while the whistleblowers’ letter alleges that prior NDAs were illegally restrictive.
That tension is now the center of the story. The whistleblowers say OpenAI’s agreements discouraged or restricted contact with the SEC. OpenAI, through its spokesperson, says its policy protects employees’ rights to make protected disclosures. The complaint asks the SEC to examine those claims and the agreements behind them.