Sam Bankman-Fried, the former cryptocurrency billionaire serving a 25-year sentence for fraud tied to the 2022 collapse of his FTX exchange, says he would welcome a pardon from President Donald Trump — but insists he has not lobbied the White House for one.

“It would be obviously, you know, ultimately up to the president, not up to me,” Bankman-Fried told FOX Business in an exclusive interview from prison. Asked directly whether he wanted a pardon, he didn’t hesitate: “Absolutely.”

The FTX founder said he has not personally been in contact with the White House or anyone connected to the president. Asked whether his parents or others had reached out on his behalf, he said, “I can’t speak for them.”

FOX Business has reviewed a pardon application filed on Bankman-Fried’s behalf. As it stands, the application seeks clemency only after he finishes serving his sentence.

DEAL-MAKING CLEMENCY: INSIDE TRUMP’S MOST DISPUTED PARDONS OF 2025

The White House, asked for comment, directed FOX Business back to the president’s previous statements that he was not considering a pardon for Bankman-Fried.

‘I didn’t steal user funds’

More than three years after his arrest, Bankman-Fried continues to insist he is innocent. He is appealing his conviction, with a decision pending before the Second Circuit Court of Appeals.

“I didn’t steal user funds,” he said. “Customers have been repaid now 170% or so on their deposits. It’s one of the very few cases where the platform was over-collateralized, where customers were more than made whole. And yet there was, you know, not just a criminal investigation, but a prosecution. And, you know, dozens of years of sentence.”

TRUMP CRYPTO CHIEF SAYS WE ARE IN THE ‘GOLDEN AGE’ FOR DIGITAL ASSETS, ‘CLEARING THE DECK’ OF BIDEN BARRIERS

Those assertions require context. Bankman-Fried was convicted in 2023 on seven counts — including wire fraud and conspiracy to commit money laundering — for diverting billions of dollars in FTX customer funds, and was sentenced to 25 years in 2024.

The FTX bankruptcy estate has said customers are being repaid in full, with reported recoveries of roughly 118% and higher for some classes of claims. But those repayments were calculated using cryptocurrency prices from November 2022, when the market was near its…

This story discusses suicide. If you or someone you know is having thoughts of suicide, please contact the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255).

Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier on Monday filed a lawsuit against OpenAI and CEO Sam Altman that claims the artificial intelligence (AI) giant’s chatbots were unsafe and that the company ignored the potential harms they posed to users.

OpenAI has been among the leaders in the AI space since it launched the groundbreaking chatbot known as ChatGPT in November 2022. The company is moving toward a highly anticipated IPO and has seen its estimated valuation surge to more than $850 billion in the past four years.

Florida’s lawsuit claims that OpenAI’s rise “is attributable to a web of deceit and the exploitation of users (including Floridians), leveraging their data and safety to boost OpenAI’s market value at unacceptable costs.”

The suit says that because of misrepresentations by OpenAI and Altman about ChatGPT have led to a “litany of harms” that was driven by their “insatiable quest to win the AI arms race and amass large fortunates, despite knowing the danger of ChatGPT.”

FEDERAL JURY DELIVERS VERDICT ON MUSK’S LAWSUIT AGAINST OPENAI

Here’s a look at five of the most explosive claims in Florida’s lawsuit against OpenAI and Sam Altman.

OpenAI prioritized product and revenue over safety

Florida’s lawsuit notes that OpenAI and Altman said in 2023 they would create a “superalignment team” that would harness 20% of its computing power over four years to achieve scientific and technical breakthroughs to control AI that becomes smarter than humans.

The complaint claims OpenAI only allocated 1% to 2% of its computing power to the problem, with researchers noting it was occurring on older tech and the least powerful chips, and expressed suspicions that better hardware was reserved for profit-generating activities.

Jan Leike, head of the superalignment team, said in an email to the board of directors before the superalignment team was dissolved that “OpenAI has been going off the rails on its mission… We are prioritizing the product and revenue above all else, followed by AI capabilities, research and scaling, with alignment and safety coming third.”

ADS COMING TO CHATGPT FOR SOME US USERS AS OPENAI SEEKS TO GENERATE NEW REVENUE

GPT-4o rollout had flawed safety testing

OpenAI’s GPT-4o model was released in May 2024 and the lawsuit claims that the company moved up its launch to a day before the release of an updated AI model launched by…

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman on Saturday publicly defended his company’s new Pentagon deal, just a day after President Donald Trump ordered federal agencies to cut ties with rival Anthropic.

Hours after the U.S. and Israel launched a joint strike against Iran, Altman took to X to answer questions about the agreement allowing the Department of War (DoW) to deploy OpenAI’s artificial intelligence (AI) models on its classified network.

“I’d like to answer questions about our work with the DoW and our thinking over the past few days,” he said.

In announcing the agreement late Friday, Altman wrote, “AI safety and wide distribution of benefits are the core of our mission. Two of our most important safety principles are prohibitions on domestic mass surveillance and human responsibility for the use of force, including for autonomous weapon systems. The DoW agrees with these principles, reflects them in law and policy, and we put them into our agreement.”

OPENAI REACHES PENTAGON AGREEMENT AS TRUMP ORDERS ANTHROPIC OFF FEDERAL SYSTEMS

The OpenAI agreement came as Trump directed every federal agency to stop using Anthropic technology, setting a six-month phase-out period and intensifying the dispute over how AI should be used in military operations.

Secretary of War Pete Hegseth said he was directing the department to designate Anthropic a “supply-chain risk to National Security.”

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei had refused demands from the Pentagon to allow its AI to be used for “all lawful purposes,” citing concerns about “mass domestic surveillance” and “fully autonomous weapons.”

When asked why the Pentagon accepted OpenAI but not Anthropic, Altman said, “Anthropic seemed more focused on specific prohibitions in the contract, rather than citing applicable laws, which we felt comfortable with.” He added that Anthropic “may have wanted more operational control than we did.”

OPENAI’S $110B FUNDING ROUND DRAWS INVESTMENT FROM AMAZON, NVIDIA, SOFTBANK

Altman said the Defense Department did not issue any explicit or implicit threats before the agreement was reached, adding that Pentagon officials were “genuinely surprised we were willing to consider” classified work.

He said OpenAI initially planned to do only non-classified work with the Pentagon, but that talks accelerated this week.

“We thought the DoW clearly needed an AI partner, and doing classified work is clearly much more complex. We have said no to previous deals in classified settings that Anthropic took….

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman dismissed the idea of data centers in space being a viable option in the next few years as SpaceX CEO Elon Musk pursues their deployment.

“I honestly think the idea with the current landscape of putting data centers in space is ridiculous,” Altman said in an interview with Indian Express. “It will make sense someday.”

Altman said that space-based artificial intelligence (AI) data center projects would have to deal with high launch costs as well as operational and maintenance challenges, like how to fix a broken or damaged component while the data center is in orbit.

“We are not there yet. There will come a time. Orbital data centers are not something that’s going to matter at scale this decade,” Altman said in the interview.

DATA CENTERS IN OUTER SPACE EMERGE AS SOLUTION TO AI’S MASSIVE ENERGY REQUIREMENTS

SpaceX’s Musk said earlier this month at an event announcing SpaceX’s acquisition of xAI that the energy demands of AI will require moving data centers to space because of the strain it puts on the environment.

“In the long term, space-based AI is obviously the only way to scale,” Musk said. “My estimate is that within 2 to 3 years, the lowest cost way to generate AI compute will be in space.”

SpaceX’s merger with xAI, the AI company Musk founded that went on to acquire the X social media platform, aims to create a more than $1 trillion company ahead of a planned initial public offering that will enable them raise capital and speed up plans to deploy data centers in space.

SPACEX ACQUIRES XAI IN RECORD-SETTING DEAL VALUED AT OVER $1T

SpaceX recently filed a document with the Federal Communications Commission requesting to launch up to 1 million satellites that would function as data centers in Earth’s orbit.

Musk said in a memo outlining his plans that SpaceX aims to put a million tons of satellites into orbit per year with 100 kilowatts of compute power per ton, adding 100 gigawatts of AI computing capacity per year.

DATA CENTER BOOM POWERING AI REVOLUTION MAY DRAIN US GRIDS – AND WALLETS

Other tech companies pursuing space-based data centers include Google, as CEO Sundar Pichai told “Fox News Sunday” that the company could put solar-powered data centers in space as soon as next year as part of what’s known as Project Suncatcher.

Amazon Web Services CEO Matt Garman said at the…