Sam Altman has filed a lawsuit over the purchase of a $27 million mansion in San Francisco’s glitzy Russian Hell neighborhood, alleging that the property is riddled with construction defects and misrepresentations.
The lawsuit, filed in San Francisco Superior Court and first highlighted by the San Francisco Chronicle, claims that the developer, Troon Pacific, knowingly sold the property despite significant flaws.
The billionaire OpenAI CEO purchased the home in March 2020, and it has since been registered as the official business address for Apollo Projects, the investment firm led by Altman and his brother Jack Altman and used to support tech startups.
Newsweek contacted Apollo Projects for comment via email.
At one point, the property was the most expensive listing in San Francisco. It boasts a wellness cottage, an infinity pool, and a Batcave-like garage as well as a private garden and was featured in Architectural Digest back when its list price was more than $40 million.
Since purchasing the property through an LLC, the house has reportedly become a headache for Altman, with the San Francisco Standard reporting that problems with the pool led to the home being flooded last year.
The lawsuit also lists a badly installed plumbing system that sent raw sewage into the property, along with waterproofing issues that it alleges were known to Troon Pacific and the CEO Greg Malin personally.
The house suffers from “poor and substandard waterproofing design and installation,” the lawsuit concluded. “In sum, owner was misled into buying a $27,000,000 ‘lemon’.”
Malin and his firm are accused of being aware of these flaws but failing to disclose them to expedite the sale. The lawsuit seeks unspecified damages, including interest and attorneys’ fees.
Newsweek contacted Troon Pacific for comment but did not receive an immediate response.
Troon Pacific shared a number of photos of the property on Instagram in 2021, including of the garage it describes as a “bat cave” in the captions.
Altman is the owner of several properties across California and Hawaii, though he spends most of his time in San Francisco, the heart of the U.S. tech industry. It is also where OpenAI, his most well-known venture, is based, along with several of OpenAI’s partner companies.
Altman’s lawsuit is the latest in a series of legal challenges for Troon Pacific, which was ordered to pay $48.1 million to investors earlier this year for fraudulent practices.
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